Which ( if any) US Presidents spoke/speak a foreign language?

June 11, 2007 1:18 PM

My German coworkers recently asked me if George W. Bush spoke a foreign language or did he have to wear an earpiece the entire time during the G8. I never thought about it before, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't know a foreign language, at least well enough to hold a conversation. Which then made me think, have any of our Presidents had enough knowledge of a foreign language to hold their own in a conversation with other world leaders? A quick Google search came up with nothing.
posted by Etta Hollis to Writing & Language (31 answers total)

Bush apparently knows Spanish, and would give speeches in Spanish as governor of Texas. (Not everyone believes this, but it seems to be the consensus.) Of course this probably doesn't help so much at G8, I guess? Hell, maybe Spanish shouldn't even be described as a foreign language.

Also, Kerry apparently spoke French omg omg.
posted by grobstein at 1:25 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm pretty sure that Bush speaks Spanish.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:25 PM on June 11, 2007

Both ambidextrous and multilingual, 20th president of the United States James Garfield could write Greek with one hand while writing Latin with the other.

via.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 1:30 PM on June 11, 2007

Up until the middle of the 20th Century most (highly) educated people studied French and Latin.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:32 PM on June 11, 2007

Forgive my Ameri-centric thinking, but isn't English common enough that most, if not all, other G8 leaders would speak it? I mean, at least Dubya can small talk with Stephen Harper, right?
posted by niles at 1:33 PM on June 11, 2007

According to a book I read recently, our president speaks Spanish quite well.

Your question was asked at Lonely Planet in 2004 and there are a few answers.
posted by not that girl at 1:36 PM on June 11, 2007

Jacquiline Kennedy could speak French, Spanish, and Italian. JFK only knew "Ich Bin Ein Berliner!"
posted by mattbucher at 1:37 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Carter made a presentation in Cuba -- in Spanish.
posted by acoutu at 1:38 PM on June 11, 2007

I've no doubt that all the G8 leaders can speak English, but it's a matter of principle and respect. If one goes to the effort of learning a foreign language well enough to converse with the leader of a country where said language is spoken, it can only be looked upon positively.
posted by PuGZ at 1:39 PM on June 11, 2007

Even if a president did speak the language of a foreign leader he was conversing with, a translator would still be used. There's too much risk of miscommunication otherwise.
posted by nervestaple at 1:40 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Thomas Jefferson knew, depending on what source you ask, between 5 and 7 languages. Latin, Greek, and French are definites (he studied classical language in school and spent four years as Minister to France), but I'm not sure what the others were. Wikipedia asserts that he learned Gaelic in order to translate a specific set of works for himself.
posted by Partial Law at 1:44 PM on June 11, 2007

English replaced French as the lingua franca of diplomacy some time back (couldnt find an exact date). Almost all such important meetings between nations are conducted in English where possible (or translated).
posted by elendil71 at 1:47 PM on June 11, 2007

Response by poster: I know translators are always used to prevent miscommunication and English is the language of diplomacy, but it still comes off as egotistical, at least in my coworkers minds.
posted by Etta Hollis at 1:58 PM on June 11, 2007

I think GWB speaks a little Spanish, but is by no means fluent.

I have no proof of this (yet) but that whole ridiculous "Que bueno" incident with David Gregory makes me wonder.

GWB, Fakin' It.
posted by Liosliath at 2:04 PM on June 11, 2007

Spanish and Chinese are more commonly spoken in the world, although a quick look at the G8 leaders suggests that all but the French leader likely speak French. (I'm guessing at Germany, but most science PhDs would need to read English at least.)
posted by acoutu at 2:05 PM on June 11, 2007

FDR

Frequent trips to Europe made Roosevelt conversant in German and French.

posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 2:11 PM on June 11, 2007

I joke that English is GWB's second language -- and he doesn't have a first.

French was the language of diplomacy for a very long time. French, along with English, are the only two official meeting languages of the UN, iirc.

It's pretty much inconceivable that any of our first dozen presidents or so didn't speak French.
posted by cmiller at 2:17 PM on June 11, 2007

Herbert Hoover spoke Mandarin. So did his wife.
posted by Atreides at 3:13 PM on June 11, 2007

For what it is worth, I've seen a couple attempts at Spanish by Bush (with Mexico's Vicente Fox in his ranch and with Uruguay's Tabaré Vázquez) and judging from what I saw, I wouldn't expect him to be able to hold an entire conversation in the language. I'm sure he knows enough to drop a word here and there, or even entire phrases, but not much past that).

Carter, on the other hand, I've seen in press conferences here in Venezuela (the Carter Center came as international observers of the referendum against Chávez) and he was getting questions in Spanish and answering fluently. Not perfectly, but fluently.
posted by micayetoca at 3:21 PM on June 11, 2007

On a tangent, but related and interested: the official languages of the UN.

They are English, French, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and Spanish, but English and French are dominant.


http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000854.html
posted by mariokrat at 5:22 PM on June 11, 2007

John Adams spoke French. Unlike Benjamin Franklin who refined his with the help of his French mistress, Adams refined his through reading French funeral orations. Which explains why Franklin was the rock star of the diplomatic duo in Paris and Versailles.

If I recall my readings, Adams also spoke or at least read Greek and Latin.
posted by jadepearl at 6:01 PM on June 11, 2007

Canadian Prime Ministers must speak both French and English, though the joke is that Chrétien spoke neither;-)
posted by orange swan at 6:15 PM on June 11, 2007

Spanish and Chinese are more commonly spoken in the world

Isn't this because more people are born into Spanish and Chinese-speaking cultures, and not because people learn it as a second language? On that note, what is the most commonly learned second language?
posted by nax at 6:33 PM on June 11, 2007

English is THE second language for a large portion of the worlds population. There are more speakers of English in China then the United States, and I am sure that South Asia has a huge number as well. French is probably way up there as well.

Thinking about it Mandarin might be a contender, as it is a semi-second language for many Chinese.
posted by BobbyDigital at 7:05 PM on June 11, 2007

On that note, what is the most commonly learned second language?

Intuitively, I reckon it would be English.
posted by Jimbob at 7:07 PM on June 11, 2007

Spanish and Chinese are more commonly spoken in the world

According to this page, the five most commonly-spoken native languages in the world are Mandarin, Hindi, English, Spanish, and Bengali. (Although there's a wide range on the figure for Spanish; depending on who you believe it might be more common than English.) If you combine the different variants of Arabic together (and I don't know if that's legitimate or not, since I don't know anything about the mutual intelligibility of various Arabic variants), it would be #6. Wu and Cantonese (the two most common languages spoken in the PRC after Mandarin) are a bit further down.

In terms of most commonly spoken language (so not number of native speakers, just total speakers who are fluent in it), Mandarin is still tops according to this page, but English comes in at #2. I have no evidence for this, but I suspect that English probably gets a big bump from India. (I've heard it said, again unsubstantiated, that there are more English-speaking people in India than there are in the U.S., but most of them don't speak English as their first language.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:12 PM on June 11, 2007

The Wiki information on second languages though somewhat spotty may put Hindi as the largest 2^nd language with maybe 582-787 million second language speakers as opposed to English with 600 million. It has been my impression that more Indians speak Hindi than English. And this doesn't take into account the Urdu is basically the same language as Hindi (but with more Persian and Arabic loans) and serves as the Lingua Franca of Pakistan.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 7:31 PM on June 11, 2007

sorry, above I should have discussed things in terms of Hindustani rather than Hindi (so as to not denegrate Urdū).

Anyway there are lots of ways to count what is a first language or a second one. One could say that people who speak only a local language and a national one speak the national language as a second one. Thus a boy who grows up in Mumbai (Bombay) and speaks both Hindustani and Marathi has Hindustani as a second language even if his family mainly speaks the local Hindi. Even more confusing is if they blend Marathi and Hindi and incorporate some cool words from Urdu.

Anyway, in the Sub-Continent there is a lot of politics about what is a native or first language and how to count it.

My guess is that Hindustani is the largest second language in the world if you count it as also speaking a local first language.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 8:16 PM on June 11, 2007

There are more speakers of English in China then the United States

Does anyone have any sources for this? I've seen it repeated dozens of times, but this would mean that at least a quarter of China speaks English. I'm sure there are over 300 million people who know "HELLO", but the claim that so many speak fluent English seems completely absurd to me. Hardly anyone on the street in Beijing speaks any English, let alone the rural population.
posted by borkingchikapa at 9:43 PM on June 11, 2007

The GOP are fond of pointing out that Condi Rice speaks Russian, but it's pretty obvious she doesn't. Likewise, I suspect if Bush REALLY spoke Spanish, he'd make sure it was amply documented (kinda like how, for awhile there, after being accused of acute "incuriousness", his press secretary made a weekly point of declaring that Bush was reading this or that high-brow book at the moment ... as if he could even spell Camus, let alone read him).
posted by RavinDave at 12:45 AM on June 12, 2007

Jefferson was quite good at reading French, but not at all talented in speaking it.
posted by bilabial at 6:20 AM on June 13, 2007