For anyone interested in how good the Spanish of those politicians is: - Marco Rubio is clearly the best one, I wouldn’t differentiate between him and other speaker with that accent (cuban?) - Buttigieg is good in terms of pronunciation but he struggles to find the words - Beto is the contrary his pronunciation is way worse but he speaks more fluently - Booker’s is terrible and you can barely understand.
TBH, you don’t need to be Spanish, Latin American or a Spanish speaker to recognise everything you said. It was very clear to the ear. Beto and Booker must give up their claim to speaking the language.
@@iAntonisX I showed this video to my (non-Spanish speaking) friend while I was editing and he actually thought Pete was the worst and Booker was the best! Booker I think carries himself with a confidence that makes it seem like he's more competent than he is. He also pronounces that one word in a dramatic way that seems impressive to a non-speaker.
That’s fair but the large reason behind it in the United States is that we have such a large country so for vacations or business we have no need to learn any other languages. In contrast Europe has many “small” nations with separate languages so there is more pressure to learn other languages.
You’d be creeped out if you came to south america cause most people speak one of these two languages: portuguese or spanish. Only a really small portion of us can actually speak 2 languages, and an even smaller can speak 3.
It's a much more common that people in the Eastern Bundesländer of Germany only speak German. They may understand you but they will probably not answer you in English. The younger the people the more likely they understand and answer you in English.
Putin once held a speech in the German parliament, the Bundestag. He spoke German the whole time. That was quite impressive. Putin was stationed in Berlin in the 80s. Angela Merkel is also fluent in Russian. I wonder in which language they communicate face to face.
Lee Hsien Loong, the Pm of Singapore, is actually a Native English speaker. You will be surprised to learn how many "Native" English speakers there are in Singapore. The problem is that we tend to mix different words, and sometimes even switch languages mid-way speaking. This is why most Singaporeans are bilingual, and basically have two native languages, depending on their ethnicity.
as a foreigner (indian) living in singapore, i feel like a bit of a loser when the only language i understand on mrt announcements and signs is english 😭😭 however, when i’m speaking to someone in english and they have a few random words in other languages, even if i don’t know exactly what the words mean, i can usually fully understand them. but after three years here stuff like can, lah, sia and others have become part of my daily vocabulary too 💀 (except it sounds a bit strange because i still have an indian accent)
fun fact: Schwarzenegger wasn't allowed to do the German dub for "Terminator" because his accent was considered too rural. It'd be like if a Hillbilly voiced Wall - E or something.
There's an in-joke about this in a deleted scene from Terminator 3. The Skynet people are watching a promo video of the Terminator android (played by Arnold) but he speaks with a thick American southern hick accent. And one of the executives turns to another and says "we can change the accent."
@@kriegshammer2161 Well... I mean, basically an austrain dialect outside of the vienna one could be considered somewhat rural. Though the idea of a Wiener Schmäh terminator is pretty hilarious, not gonna lie.
He sounds the same in both languages, he just masks his high pitched voice better in Russian, he still has a rather mild accent like many from St Petersburg.
The popes aren’t that great at English because international communication within the Church is done in Latin, so they are more proficient at that language.
Yeah, even JP2 struggled a bit with his English. He was good enough at it but he didn't consider himself fluent. He wasn't even all that good at Italian when he was first elected. In the end, he was entirely fluent in Polish, German, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and maybe even French (?)
Francis had noticed (as had his superiors in the Society of Jesus back before his becoming a bishop and then Pope) his weakness in English, and he had spent three months at an Irish theological college to learn English.
The funny thing about Arnold is that his accent is arguably more noticeable when he speaks German. In English, he just has "a German accent". In German, he has a truly overwhelmingly powerful South German/Austrian accent.
So its more of a situation of him being ashamed about his accent (heard that he has was declined from doing his own dubs), rather than forgotten german?
@@themfwestcoast the whole decline doing his own dubs is that his austrian accent is very hick and southern which wouldn't make sense for the terminator, a perfect machine to speak hickish german
I had a classmate once who thought in Japanese 100% of the time, and while speak English (her fourth language) she was translating from Japanese to Spanish and then from Spanish to English. This was because she learned English, from Spanish speaking teachers, who did not speak Japanese. Holding a conversation with someone who is thinking in Japanese, but speaking with a really thick Mexican accent, while being clearly ethnically Samoan is a good way to be reminded that the world is a wondrously varied place. She told that she thinks American English speakers have a weird linguistic superpower that we don't know we have. She observed that we are able to freely make up and understand slang, on the spot, and extremely fluidly. She said that it's part of the reason it can be difficult to learn English, in America. She gave me examples which made sense to me, but after she explained how terrible they translated into either Spanish _or_ Japanese, I started to see what she was saying. She actually thought it was really interesting. The way some of us freely use nouns as verbs or the way we can make sense of statements like, "The whole world markets together, because first the Mongols, then Napolean." suggests that our linguistic centers are always awake. She said couldn't decide if thought we should all have an easier time becoming bilingual than we realize, or if it's the reason we struggle to.
To be fair, any language can make slangs in any time when they want to. It's not an american speciality. Also english is difficult anywhere in the world, that's one of the worst options to learn as a foreign language, from how chaotic it is. And english natives has hard time with language learning because their native language lacks a lot of concepts that lot of other languages has. You guys even lost your case system and grammatical gender system that you had in the past. And not from bad, but she literally did one of those things what people should avoid when speacking in a different language, and that thing is the translating in your head, lot of people says that it's the best if you build up your sentences in that language from the start instead of translating from other languages. And to be fair, those people are right about this.
@@kittencorp.3295 We ended up with a global economy because Napolean enforced lasting economic reforms that exploited the trade routes established by the Mongolians.
For anyone learning English: please know that the vast majority of us native speakers don't care that you have an accent like the people in this video. I love hearing different accents, and i think most can agree with me!
@@fuguthefish ig bad was the wrong word to use. But as an Indian, it quit okay with us if you have trouble understanding our accent. We just speak more slowly than most others, and pronounce all the letter properly as the concept of silent letters isnt too prevalent in most of our native languages. I think that is basically where we differ.
If someone doesn't have a good accent in any language, that doesn't mean that they aren't good or even almost fluent in that language. Accents and fluency in a language are two very different things.
@@juliag.3584 Yeah exactly I really hate it when someone make fun of other people's accent and pronunciation while being ignorant and just speak his own language
Especially with English the dental fricatives are of importance when it comes to fluency. Most non-native speakers pronounce those as alveolar fricatives, which makes them less fluent in English. For the rest I agree with you.
You’re right, of course, having an accent does not mean you do not dominate the language. But it does affect how well people will understand you. Not because of your fault, not because of their. Its just like that. I often even struggle understanding germans from the south of germany because of their accent, bespike they speak the same language as I. Its just a bigger effort to follow people with an accent, and there isnt really a thing we can do about it.
@@Wonderingax indeed. In addition to his native Spanish, Francis is also conversant in Latin (the official language of the Holy See), he speaks fluent Italian (the official language of Vatican City and the "everyday language" of the Holy See), German, French, Portuguese, English, and he understands the Piedmontese language and some Genoese.
@@fotoralf As someone who speaks a bit of Italian, hearing Pope Francis speak it is kind of hilarious because even I can tell that he has a very strong Spanish-speaker’s accent
this guy wasn't a politician but he could still speak English, French, German and I do believe he could also speak Russian, Swedish, Greek, Spanish and Italian. his name was Sir Christopher Lee and he was a native English speaker.
On the defense of the Pope, he does speak a lot more languages than the average person. Argentine Spanish, Italian, German, French and Portuguese are among the languages he is comfortable speaking.
He also fakes his British accent, and probably has to put effort into speaking Queen's English rather than American English. Remember he is American by birth and grew up in the US. He only renounced his US citizenship when he was elected to Parliament.
@@mrvwbug4423 not sure about that. he didn't live in the US later than the age of 5, and both his parents are posh english people. though his accent is totally affected, by all accounts he adopted it consciously while studying at Eton as a teenager.
@@mrvwbug4423 "grew up in the US" he spent 4 years in the US between the ages of 0 and 5, all of his schooling was done in Belgium and the UK, wtf do you mean? Every person that was born on US soil has a US citizenship from birth so I don't see how that's relevant. He also had British citizenship as his father was British.
When it comes to Scandinavia, for example, it is no wonder that they find it easy to learn English. The languages are closely related. Finland, on the other hand, has made a fantastic journey in terms of learning languages. Those who understand how different Finnish is from other languages understand.
I'm from Sweden and I think subtitling is the biggest reason why scandinavian people is so good at English. If you talk to older people today, some speak English, but going back 30-40 years, almost no 60+ person could speak English despite the similarities. Sweden still had subtitles back then but fewer american/english shows aired.
Finnish isn't even Indo European, it is Uralic and related to Hungarian,so yeah it is entirely different from other European languages. And yes it does sound like having a little turkic influence
And vice versa! I can speak 4 languages with native or near-native accents, but I'm only completely fluent in English (the others being French, Mandarin, Japanese). It's actually kind of weird because the moment you say one or two sentences with a natural accent, people assume you're totally fluent.
That's what I thought when I heard the Indian Prime Minister. He was fluent in Indian English. Just because he speaks with the Indian inflection doesn't mean he isn't fluent.
Sorta feel like this might be my situation, I'm natively danish but have been involved in online communities since like age 11 so I can write English perfectly well but I rarely ever speak it out loud so even though I know exactly how words are supposed to be pronounced from youtubers and such I just can't say them. Like I learned from the virus that I can't get the Q in quarantine down.
The Schwarzenegger and Kissinger thing is really interesting. I can't imagine, as an English speaker, forgetting how to speak English. It's so entrenched.
As a native German speaker, I can say that Kissinger is indeed difficult to understand. He speaks a weird mix of German with a slight American accent and his regional Franconian accent. But Schwarzenegger still speaks German like a native. I love his Austrian accent. :D
I relate to them as I’m in a similar situation. Though as the above comment said, Schwarzenegger is still pretty understandable. He has a thick accent but most of it is from his region of origin rather than from English since german can be a very complicated language when it comes to regional dialects. Kissinger is just sadly not that good at German anymore though
@@lebendigesgespenst7669 Agree on Schwarzenegger. With Kissinger I'm not quite shure if some of his "bad" german comes from the fact that he is just pretty old. I looked into some recent english interviews of him and he doesn't sound that "fluent" there eighter. Even though it is a bit better there. He just speaks with many pauses in both languages.
@@lenab5266 I have also seen someone else in this comment section talk about how his German doesn't just have a Swiss accent, it's a Swiss accent as spoken decades ago, when he was younger. Imagine a person who grew up in the American South in the 1950's left the country when they were about 10 to live in France and they never moved back. Not only would his English have a Southern drawl, he would be using vocabulary that was around in that time period rather than vocabulary that has cropped up since.
Native Russian speaker who moved to the US when I was very young. I spoke Russian at home, but throughout school and with my friends English became used far more. I’m 22 now and almost completely lost my ability to speak Russian. Long road ahead to relearn it lol, Russian is incredibly difficult to learn
I honestly don’t blame him. Russian and English are such insanely different languages that it’s probably the lingual version of making him run in high heels.
@@MortalWombat4480 different, yes. Insanely different? They're both Indo-European languages. If you think Russian and English are still share a lot of similarities. Otherwise, if you think they are 'insanely different' what do you think when English is compared to non-Indo-European languages?
I was working in Munich Germany about 20 years ago. An American couple asked me for directions. After helping them out they walked on and I heard one of them tell the other "wow her English is really good". Being English, I would hope my mother tongue was up to par lol
I was in Hamburg and asked a question in a store. people looked at me as if I just swallowed a dog. only one burly man understood and answered in broken English
Here in South Korea every single president from 1948 until 2003 spoke 100% fluent Japanese because all of them where educated during the Japanese occupation period. President Park Jung Hee who ruled South Korea from 1960 to 1979 was even a graduate from imperial Japanese military academy. But what is interesting is that all of those presidents even including president Park refused speaking Japanese when having summit talks with Japanese prime ministers. They would always have their personal translators with them even though they understood Japanese 100%. It was obviously because they wanted to be shown as a nationalistic and patriotic figure. But when they retired they were often given interviews with Japanese medias and people were surprised at how well they kept their Japanese skills even after all those years.
That is not surprising at all considering the history between your nations. In fact, I suspect that is the reason why Henry Kissinger preferred not to speak German as well.
east germans were taught russian as their second language in place of west german english during germany’s occupation when i did a student exchange in germany one of my friends was placed with a family from east germany and it meant he could only really communicate with their children as they learned russian as children
I know this video is old, but I think Abe Shinzo speaks fluent English. He even studied in the US for a year and a half. If you listen to his speeches in Japanese, he delivers them in the same weird, halting manner. That's just how he speaks. Like a weirdo.
separate each words and say them clearly and slowly is how Japanese speaks in situations like that so that people can understand well. But he speaks too slow lol
Reading another language is 1 type of comprehension(I find it the easiest), while hearing comprehension is another type of understanding and speaking still another.. It's MUCH easier to give a speech that you prepare, proofread etc than it is to understand thoughts, concepts etc.. Especially if there's innuendo involved
It is fairly commun for fast talkers in their native language tripping in a second-language that they don't master fluently. One suggestion I could give Englisgh speakers learning French is to slow down your speech. French is more monotone than English, so accentuation and timing is less oimportant than in English.
MoonRabbit Dylan Yes but English is the main language used for schools, businesses and government. Other official languages are just mother tongue languages.
Honestly I love hearing the different accents people have when speaking english and I find it interesting how depending on how and where you learn english you cant end up adopting that place or person's accent.
As a German native speaker I can tell you: Even though Schwarzenegger speaks in a dialect, his German is much more convincing than Kissinger's German is.
@@londoncrow500 Look, in my native language, we say "überzeugend" (which means "convincing" or "compelling") - not only when we talk about arguments or evidence, but also when we want to say that something leaves a good impression. So when I say "Someone's German is convincing", I don't mean that he or she is trying to convince us of something specific, but that he or she does a better job at convincing us of his ability to speak German. Maybe "convincing" cannot be used in that way in English and this is simply a language mistake :)
Schwarzenegger's German is pretty good actually. He's got a strong Styrian accent so I can see why it would sound strange to folks from Germany, but he seems fluent enough in that one clip. Kissinger did pretty alright too; quite remarkable if you take into account the fact that he fled Germany more than 80 years ago, at age 15. His reluctance to speak the language may stem from the historical connotations he associates it with.
PAXperMortem sorry, let me rephrase that. I basically agree but miss-understood your point when reading it first, never mind. About Kissinger, it’s remarkable how he doesn’t sound “Austrian” at all, which is quite a feat for an Austrian.
Reportedly Schwarzenegger wasn't allowed to voice the Terminator in the German dub because the regional accent was so specific as not to match the character.
Putin sounds so goofy speaking English, I expected him to have this deep menacing voice and we have that of a puberty ridden teenager with severe social anxiety.
St Petersburg accent, he clearly doesn't speak English much and is not well practiced. He can mask the high voice a bit more in Russian, but even listening to him in Russian he has the mild accent typical of St Petersburg.
I actually think that's the real reason he doesn't speak English in public. It's not because he's nationalistic, it's because he's not very graceful at speaking English. Putin wants to appear uber-competent at everything he does, but it clearly appears unnatural for him to speak the English tongue.
On the German speaking politicians: - Arnold Schwarzenegger comes from a very rural area in Austria, and so his pronunciation is, by default, unique. However the only thing that is different is that his dialect is becoming less and less audible. other than that his grammar is perfectly good. - Kissinger seems to speak a little less fluently than a native, but his accent is much more standard. in conclusion, one is probably self-conscious about his accent, the other about his fluency, but hopefully this shows why they might be so reluctant to speak German (btw I speak German)
Not sure if true, but heard that he offered to use his own voice for The Terminator in German, but the translators turned him down. Seems it would be like a big evil cyborg talking like Larry the Cable Guy (git err dunn). 😗
I learnt German. When I heard Arnie speaking German, I thought to myself "Cool Arnie learnt some German. Good for him!". He just didn't sound like a native-speaker to me.
As a German, I was happy that Merkel was mentioned She’s always polite when she apologises for her “not good English” I actually think hers is perfectly fine because German pronunciation is so different
@@phoenixfeathers4128 C’est la pure réalité ! We Europeans and Germany in the lead have lost all pride. Merkel shouldn't speak English. She is the head of greater Germany. The Germans have a treasure: The German language!
@@Pike737 The greatness of Germany does not lie in the size of its territory! This is the great mistake of the German nation… Germany is great for the best she has produced; its architecture, its philosophy, its literature, its music, its science ... What a pity that so much beauty and grandeur is eclipsed by the memory of war.
As a Swede (one of the top three countries with the highest level of English fluency) I can tell you that I even dream in English many times. Daily I think about a word in English but where I can't come up with the corresponding word in Swedish. Damn it 😄
My friends and family are used to my codeswitching because my brain will immediately fill any gaps in my native Spanish with English. Native English speakers find surprising that my accent is more "British" because every Latin American they know speaks with an American accent.
that's not completely true - beginning in the late 70s, the east german school kids had the chance to learn English beginning from 7th grade, as long as they were good in Russian.
@@leepreston9637 Actualy Hitler was Austrian in name only. Hitlers village of Braunau-Inn was a part of the German confederate states. When Prussia brought together the German city states, many villages were left out of the Reich, and Hitler’s village was one of them. His village was on border between German Reich and Austria and he always considered himself German and so did his family and every family in the area he was born.
Kissinger's accent is kind if intelligible, he sounds like that grandpa who settled in the US and became too American. Arnold's accent sounds perfectly fine, but with an Austrian accent tho Just wanted to mention, Boris' french is not that good lol
am french and yeah you're absolutely right about boris.....he sucks at it.....he kinda has a good accent but is totally unable to say anything that makes sense
@@Alex-uv3td If it is because of the constant stuttering that's not necessarily because of his french, that's just how he speaks ruclips.net/video/cIFhVvqpXaw/видео.html
@@Alex-uv3td Boris tends to speak with a stutter between words in English. It's even harder for him in French. Funny thing is though, he can perfectly recite the Illyad in Ancient Greek
Yeah, I was going to say this. I've heard him speak English a lot and he's actually really good at it. He just pronounces some words in a really French way.
It's not even that strong. I've spent quite some time in French-speaking countries and I've heard some thick accents. Macron's is fine imho, totally intelligible.
I would hope that the PM of Singapore speaks English well, considering it’s the official language. I am not sure his “good” English skills are an artifact of him studying abroad.
He has a pretty aristocratic-sounding British influence though, that's what I was trying to highlight. I am annoyed at this sequence because in the script I also was going to show the prime minister of Pakistan, who also went to school in the UK and has a very posh accent but I forgot to record that line 🤦♂️
@@JJMcCullough Seeing how both of his parents were top of their class in cambridge and it being his Alma mater - the only way for his upbringing to be more posh is for him to walk around with a cane while smoking a large pipe.
I'm eternally jealous of people who can speak multiple languages so well. I'm American and I took spanish classes for 12 years in school, but without any practical application of the language outside of the classroom (along with a generally poor aptitude for foreign languages on my part) I could never get beyond the most basic of sentences. And now that it's been 5-6 years since my last spanish class, I couldn't even begin to humor a conversation in the language.
Arnold's German: A++ Kissinger's German: B-/C Thats all I have to say. Kissinger has forgotten his German, where as Arnold, thanks to his accent, has retained it and is almost indistinguishable from a Steiermark native speaker, as if he never left.
Tbf to Kissinger he's also been in America for far longer and is obviously way older than Arnold, as well as immigrating to America at a younger age than Arnold. So I think those are probably the main reasons Arnold is better at German.
I am guessing that is partly why he does not speak English. He can not project power as much as he can do when he speaks Russian. And of course there are nationalistic reason to, I think. Image is really important for Putin. But who know what language an Ex-KGB agent knows.
As an English speaker who learned spanish later in life i can say that i have alot of empathy for people who speak with strong accents in their second language. For whatever reason some people physically have struggles no matter how fluent they get
@@kadz3597 Luckily, many people hate Law And Justice. Unless we're talking about religious old ladies in the rural areas. I'm pretty sure that's where they're getting majority of their support from
Macron is lisping in French, and it shows even more in English. Plus he has the ultra typical French accent. He is the first French president to have a fair grasp of English though, so we can give him this credit at least.
@@adamanderson4811 Often though when French-natives learn english they learn the th sound, but end up overcorrecting, or adding the sound where it doesn't belong.
Funny how French and German people (can confirm as a German) both have the same problems when learning English. Its always the "th" sounds lol. Most Germans who have a stronger accent when they're speaking English pronounce it "ze" and some pronounce it "de" I used to pronounce it as "de" to completely avoid the struggle with "th" sounds
@@_erik_2138 Even some Native Speakers pronounce it 'd' like the Irish for exanple. It's just a very rare sound across different languages. Funnily enough though it doesn't appear in a lot of languages, but some of the few ones where it does exist are all extremely wide-spread: English, Spanish, Arabic...
He might not be a politician, but I find Roald Dahl's (a famous children's book writer) linguistic skills quite fascinating as a Norwegian. Dahl was born in the UK to immigrants from Norway, and Norwegian was his first language. He did an interview for the NRK in 1989, and I can tell that his Norwegian is very rusty; probably, he has spent so much of his life in Britain that his native language has weakened over time, much like with Kissinger and his German.
I am in a similar situation. My parents are belgian and I was born in the US. Since I haven't been living with my parents my french has gotten noticeably worse. Like, my accent hasn't gotten worse but I tend to forget words more
He had issues taking out the words but most of his pronunciations were PERFECT. It's pretty rare cause most English speakers can't pronounce french correctly. He kept the good pronunciation from his childhood in Wallonia, but if u know in what walloon province he was living in, tell me
This isn't the best clip of him. There are other videos where he speaks it perfect and doesn't stutter. I also imagine Boris may not speak it very often with being a PM for Britain.
My native language is Russian and i can tell you that it's very hard to articulate and make a clear, coherent sound in English(Basically Putin trying to talk without accent and the only way is to do these weird mouth, tongue movements) . Probably that's because different muscles are involved while speaking Russian, idk ;)
Well, when you start speak Russian, your prononciation will be probably chicken-like. Don't be so proud because of your so called "international" language. Times will changes.
@@dmitrikaljuznoi1323 У меня тоже самое, но я говорю именно про произношение на английском. Когда я пытаюсь произнести что-то на английском без акцента приходится производить такие странные движения ртом, дабы язык не заплелся, ну и чтоб была понятная речь "без акцента"))
I had a friend from Denmark, who became quite upset when she began dreaming in English. Prior to that moment all of us including her husband conversed with her in Danish in her Dreams and she didn’t find that odd, despite the fact none of us could speak Danish.
6:20 As someone from the Netherlands, it's interesting to hear you point to Rutte as an example for someone who's quite good at English, given that his strong Dutch accent when speaking English is regularly poked fun at in our own media.
I really think esperanto should replace english and be the universal language, because it is not associated with any culture. Learning a language is a really great thing fort the mind and the person but when the influence of one language is too big, it comes wiith the danger of acculturation, which french canadian and québécois are afraid of. It is really hard to understand it when litteraly everything that defines you as a nation isnt being put in danger.
When former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was campaigning for president, an old video of him speaking English resurfaced, and his pronunciation was so bad the opposition even produced some ads attacking him for his lack of English abilities. The most infamous bit was when he tried to pronounce “infrastructure”, and even to this day, it’s still the punchline of many jokes aimed at his unpopular presidency.
But now tables have turned, and now we have an ancient SOB who cannot speak a single word of English, barely any Spanish, and won't even go out of the country for international summits because he knows he won't fool them like he fooled the Mexican people
George Doty-Williams I think we can be somewhat forgiving of him on that regard. He’s from a generation that didn’t have the necessity to learn English, and he certainly didn’t have the most privileged early years, unlike other politicians, whose families have been influential for many generations. Obviously I disagree on the way he’s running the country though.
That is a problem of your phantasy but not of Putin's character. In Russian mythology their heroes fight with bears or fly with cranes. Like Americans doing the Rodeo. I can imagine Putin fighting with a bear, but I cannot imagine Trump riding the Rodeo.....lol
Oh, that poor oppressed Merkel girl had to make an unfair choice between being called second class human by the English language (man-woman paradigm) and making an early career in a female-sounding paradigm of muzhchina-zhenchina (man-woman in Russian, not the same as "man, male" in English) and another entity "chelovek" (Russian for human as "man" of both genders). What a poor girl was that Angela! C'mon, people! Russian language is not as sexist as English, in that sense. Even Polish has this "male" as "chelovek" sexist thing but Russian doesn't. Merkel owns a lot of her self-confidence to the fact she was exposed to a system of both male and female beings being equally oppressed by the owners for many hundreds of years. In-joke. No offense)
@@annneru I'm sorry but what the hell...? Choosing russian in the DDR was normal and not because of grammar and sexism? That shit was like living in north korea
My mum was studying both Russian and English in school but okay... However English classes were only about once a week and often cancelled because the teacher was sick. So while they did put more focus on Russian, you could definitely do both.
It kinda sounds like Putin was trying to suppress his accent when speaking English. It sounded strained. To his credit, Russian is a nightmare to learn as well so i'm not gonna judge.
Hang on. Macron is genuinely fluent in English though. I’ve seen long long discussions and interviews where his English is pretty damn good talking about very complex and technical details. His only problem is pronunciation- hardly a shock from a French speaker. Merkel just doesn’t speak English as well, her accent is better (Germanic language helps) but her range and flexibility in the language doesn’t compare. That’s no slight on her at all, she is from a generation where Russian was the second language of choice and so she speaks that fluently (which is a true achievement, tough language!!). Her grasp of English is impressive given it’s an additional language she learned later in life.
I've met East Germans (and Hungarians) in the 80s and most of them spoke better English than Merkel, plus I noticed that they spoke better English than Russian, and preferred to speak English rather than Russian. Merkel having so poor command of English leaves somewhat negative impression on me (like if she grew up in a really hard-core communist environment.)
@@alkriman4182 she was his history teacher not english and french people have a terrible accent because we make fun of each other for our terible accent witch makes us self consious about it and provent us for accually developing a good one at least it was my experience in school and a lot of people reported the same thing
@@lyoubomiratanassov7357 I don’t know, I grew up in a part of Germany that used to belong to the GDR and there are lots of adults (both Merkel’s age and far far younger) who haven’t learned English at all or have a poor grasp of it. Not saying it’s great for her to only have a basic grasp of English, but she must have been over thirty when the wall came down. At that age learning a second language can pose quite a challenge, especially if you do not have a natural aptitude for languages
Macron doesn't get a pass. It's fair to insult his english because if you went to france and spoke french at the same level they would beat you and dump you in the Atlantic ocean
That's unfair. The clip chosen for the video is a particularly unflattering one. Here (ruclips.net/video/aPN82yg7L4k/видео.html) you can hear him have a conversation in french over a subject he is actually comfortable with. Also, on an unrelated note, hearing Johnson speak french made me realize that, once you dissociate it from the man himself, he actually has a pretty good voice.
Well, he learned it when he was a kid and most likely didn't speak it that much afterwards, so maybe it's not perfect, but I think he can understand French
Kissinger's German is so interesting. I think it kinda got stuck at the young age when he moved to America and while the German language as a whole developed from then, his German stayed the same. In particular, he is using a lot of "Präteritum" tense which isn't really a thing we often do anymore in spoken language. It also makes me think he might be from northern Germany since that's more prevalent there and he is speaking in a pretty standard accent, not a dialect.
It's actually extremely common for languages to get "stuck in time" moving across continents, especially small pockets of people. There were Dutch enclaves in Iowa speaking 200 year old Dutch, mostly because they hadn't been getting any influence from back home
Lee Hsien Loong's first language is actually English. In fact, the most common first language in Singapore is English even though the majority are ethnic Chinese.
8:18 It's not that east Germany was closed off to the outside world, why Merkel isn't that fluent in English, but it has to do with east Germany. She learned Russian instead of English in school and studied physics in Russia. Btw Putin speaks fluent German (as he was a spy in Germany). So if Merkel and Putin meet they can either talk in German or Russian.
I'm rly happy you included Schwarzenegger, with Austria being such a small country that is easily forgetable and well, his german is rly good, it's like well he's a native haha. Fun fact: Schwarznegger couldn't dub his own role in terminator in german, bc his sialect was seen as hillybilly in german
@@DeaconTaylor A darkly funny related fact: Originally OJ Simpson was considered for the role of the Terminator. However, they decided not to cast him because "nobody would believe a nice guy like him could be a killer"
Merkel: *speaks English perfectly fine* Merkel: "I'm sorry, I'm not very good at this." Awww. :C I hope someone can give her a confidence boost. Yes, she speaks with an accent, but it's still fairly decent English. She's definitely better than Macron, and he was completely intelligible even with his off pronunciations. Also, while Putin projects this idea that he speaks Russian on the global stage to show Russian equality to the Anglosphere, I suspect it's also partially because his voice goes up half an octave when he speaks English. He just sounds better in Russian, and that's important for a leader too.
Germans are like this, if they think(not what we think, they think) they aren't good enough for something, they apologize. It's not they don't believe on themselves rather they always find every kind of rational and logical way of approaching things. They really hate time wasting.
Merkel can speak fluent Russian though. She grew up in socialist East Germany, where students learned Russian instead of English as their first foreign language.
She has definitely gotten better in the years and, I think that she speaks privately with the politicians also in English, but just not so much in public at an important and complicated speech, Merkel was not really known for good speeches in Germany, but when she has given a good speech it was mostly abroad in other countries. for example, her speech at Harvard, was one of her best.
@@soldatenkonig383 Germans don't really like to speak english, they like it when you try to speak their language tho. . And there are those who hate you and doesn't matter how hard you try, they will look down on you just because you are a foreigner.. 3 of us(the only ones who this guy could talk with) left the work just because of that one guy, the "Teamleiter"... He was anythign but a leader.. xD Even the guys i talked with in a bar said, that for me it's better if i don't plan to permanently move to Germany... Germans are nice but most of them i met don't really like foreigners in their country. .
His voice is indeed soft even if he speaks Russian, so any parody where he has a deep baritone like voice does not work well for the people that are used to hearing him for the last 20 years
German is my native language, although I've lived in Canada for 30 years now (15 in Germany). Schwarzenegger's German is perfect, from what I could hear. Yes, he has the typically heavy Austrian accent, but his German is solid. Kissinger's German was pretty good, but he's difficult to understand because he mumbles a bit. What I've done to keep my German in excellent shape is to read German books and watch plenty of German shows and documentaries on RUclips and other channels. Plus, Netflix has a lot of great German shows, such as Dogs of Berlin.
As a German I have to disagree a little. Schwarzeneggers german ist still good and I couln't make out any major grammatical errors in these videos but he sounds like an american that learned austrian german. Kissingers german on the other hand was pretty bad imo. He made many major grammatical errors and his conjugation was almost always wrong. You can see him struggle to find words and then setteling for words that are barely good enough to still make sense. On top of that he mumbles so bad I really had a hard time to understand him.
Das sehen eh nur Deutsche also warum nich auf Deutsch die die es nicht lesen können müssen sowieso nur die Untertitel aktivieren Activate subtitle \/ Why not speak german, there are only germans that will read this anyway, and if there is anyone that cant read it should just activate the subtitle
Haha. I do the exact opposite to keep my English in form I like to watch English RUclips video like this one and even stuff that is more complex. Just so that I don’t start to forget the language because I don’t speak it very often the last time was about 9 month ago. And only because I had English classes. Other then that I never come in the situation to actually speak it which tends to make me self aware when such a situation does occur and then I can start to have black outs wich is funny because I don’t have that problem when writing English.
"Boris Johnson can speak French because he went to school in Belgium." -cuts to clip of Johnson speaking French and taking a minute to say like 4 words."
If you'd only spent some years of your childhood in Belgium I would expect you to speak everyday life French, not to be able to talk about political topics.
Nah. He was a nationalist who denied Japanese war crimes during WW2. Look up what the Japanese did in China and Korea, like the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731 and comfort women. (Not so "fun" fact, the acts of the Japanese were considered abhorrent even by the literal Nazis...) Imagine Angela Merkel or Olaf Scholz denying the Holocaust. Shinzo Abe was nobody to feel sorry for. Good riddance tbh.
Sure, but it if it is too difficult to understand I think it's fair to say that even if they don't pause so much (which I probably wouldn't give them) then they aren't all-that capable of communicating in English, are they?
Martin van Buren, the 8th president of the USA, spoke Dutch as his first language. He is the only American president to this day to not speak English as a native language.
We emigrated to Canada, Montreal, from Germany when I was 6 years old, in 1948. I spoke German at home, went to an English school and learned French on the streets. Quite easy when one is young.
@@tbayspotting I always wonder why in the U.S. we don't start language learning until high school. It's ridiculous to start that late, it should start at the latest in first grade.
He's french is about the level B2, I think. I had the impression he was searching for the right expression(s), if that's the correct phrase :) And I think he made a mistake in saying "incroyablement" instead of "incroyable".
My favorite law school professor once said: “If you speak three or more languages, you’re called a polyglot. If you speak two languages, you’re called bilingual. And if you speak one language, you’re called an American.”
I have untold respect for anyone who can speak multiple languages. Even living in Canada, a bilingual country and taking many French classes in school hearing or seeing the language is like hitting a brick wall in terms of understanding. I'm astounded at the mastery of the English language that literally all these people have.
English is pretty easy considering the amount of media where you can find it (TV, series, webpages, tourists) whilst French is pretty much limited to France and half of QC. Since you don't get as much exposition, especially early in life, it's neigh impossible to just get familiar with it. Also french sucks as a language, way too complicated. I'm a french native tho so yay
All of Europe after learning 4 different languages: bruh I'm Finnish I spoke English since 9 I can speak tolerable Swedish I understand Spanish I studied French in middle school That sounds exceptional to some people, but you gotta speak Many languages here, everyone knows at least 3
🇩🇪 About the German: • Arnold is from Styria, so his accent has always been very distinct and sadly he's mocked for that in itself, as well as his Americanized German. I tend to think he has no American drawl at all, but people like to play that up, if they imitate him. Saying "I'm the Governator!" is just too much fun. His dubbed voice is very charming and suave standard German by the way. Unlike e.g. Christoph Waltz, who dubs himself, Arnold does not! His iconic GNAAARGH-I'llBeBack voice is definetly missing in the German versions of his movies. 😂 • Kissinger is quite bad at it. But no wonder. The guy's not been using it for decades. You can understand it, but his grammar and pronounciation are far off. • Yes. Merkel's English is subpar and it's indeed because she grew up in the GDR. But apparently her Russian is fantastic, which is why other European leaders alledgedly like to leave dealing with Putin to her. ;) • Oh and lastly: You showed and mentioned ex-Chancellor Schmidt in your video. He used to be very good at English, especially considering the time. He spoke at UK Labor party conferences and gave frequent interviews in English.
You mentioned Kissinger. In my opinion his German is actually not that bad. He's obviously not as good as a native speaker and he hasn't spoken it in a long time but I think his grammer is fine. But you are right if it comes to the pronunciation, though I think this might be a consequence of his age and the fact that he mumbles a bit.
theunsolvedcase My understanding is that in all Warsaw Pact countries before the fall of communism, all schools taught Russian as a second language. I dated a woman from Poland who told me this.
It was two Upper Austrians who taught me the phrase "Die bellen, die Steyer". Apparently, this is a widespread Austrian sentiment. As a native of California, I can say that our Governator exaggerated this accent (too good effect) in public, but does not have it nearly as much when speaking to small business groups. It is a a personal brand, exotic in English but just plain provincial in German.
Not to be an ass, but in terms of world wide influence, Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands are not as influential. The Netherlands were run by other countries for hundreds of years, and their language is not even popular in Europe. Scandinavian countries, despite their integration through conquest of other European countries, are not that influential culturally and linguistically these days, besides socialism.
@@APPLEcrispBISH There are several things wrong with your comment. - Sweden and the Netherlands’ soft global power is often overlooked. According to the 2020 International Monetary Funds estimates, the Netherlands has the eleventh highest GDP per capita on the globe, whilst Sweden comes in at rank sixteen. Both nations are leaders in education and science, and citizens from Sweden, Norway and the Nerherlands tend to be happier than their Anglophone equivalents. Norway and the Netherlands are members of the European Union, and hold major sway within that organization, thus projecting their strength onto the global stage via the EU. - The Netherlands are fiercely independent, and have mostly been as such for the last five hundred years, save for miniscule intervals during, say, the Napoleonic Wars or WW II. - Scandinavian countries are not, nor were they ever, socialist. This is a lie, perpetuated by left-wing politicians in the US. Norway, Sweden and Denmark have Free Market systems with large amounts of welfare and social security. You could call these capitalist mations with high government spending social democratic or Keynesian, but the truth is that these methods were actually introduced by Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini first, followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt about ten years later. They have little to do with socialism or communism, which are economic systems that seek to end the free market, increase workers’ control over capital and create a classless society.
Yes but they are neither that small (in landmass anyway) nor obscure. I'm sure way more people know about those countries than about the actual small countries (Andorra, Monaco etc.) or more obscure ones like Moldova.
I think you confused "fluent" and "with a good accent" Macron does not hesitate at all when speaking English, and a has a large vocabulary along good grammar It's just that he has a French accent : / It's kind of like saying your American friend joking around and using a French accent is bad at English. Their English level didn't change, they're just using a different accent.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
For anyone interested in how good the Spanish of those politicians is:
- Marco Rubio is clearly the best one, I wouldn’t differentiate between him and other speaker with that accent (cuban?)
- Buttigieg is good in terms of pronunciation but he struggles to find the words
- Beto is the contrary his pronunciation is way worse but he speaks more fluently
- Booker’s is terrible and you can barely understand.
TBH, you don’t need to be Spanish, Latin American or a Spanish speaker to recognise everything you said. It was very clear to the ear. Beto and Booker must give up their claim to speaking the language.
Antonis Fair enough, I would say though that Beto can speak Spanish without pausing as much, I can remember Castro not being as good as I expected.
@@iAntonisX I was going to say exactly the same!
@@iAntonisX I showed this video to my (non-Spanish speaking) friend while I was editing and he actually thought Pete was the worst and Booker was the best! Booker I think carries himself with a confidence that makes it seem like he's more competent than he is. He also pronounces that one word in a dramatic way that seems impressive to a non-speaker.
J.J. McCullough Agreed, I can understand where they’d be coming from.
Fun Fact:
Putin speaks perfect german
Merkel speaks perfect russian
Maybe because Putin was stationed in the KGB office in the GDR and Merkel was RAISED in said soviet puppet state...
'Perfect' is kind of an overstatement here
Putin is okay at German, but def not perfect
Never heard Merkel speak Russian though
NextLevelGamer Merkel’s Russian is rubbish. No judgement, so is mine, it’s super hard
@@Ninja-Alinja My Russian is awful too. Despite my mother being a native speaker
NextLevelGamer my wife is a native speaker, and so became our son, but still hard to learn even in that environment
As a European , i think it is weird when someone can speak only one language.
That’s fair but the large reason behind it in the United States is that we have such a large country so for vacations or business we have no need to learn any other languages. In contrast Europe has many “small” nations with separate languages so there is more pressure to learn other languages.
You’d be creeped out if you came to south america cause most people speak one of these two languages: portuguese or spanish. Only a really small portion of us can actually speak 2 languages, and an even smaller can speak 3.
It's a much more common that people in the Eastern Bundesländer of Germany only speak German. They may understand you but they will probably not answer you in English. The younger the people the more likely they understand and answer you in English.
Yeah, most times you speak at least three languages
@RichardSpears1 Yeah that's because you guys just decided to conquer the world so now we all bend to your will or your rebellious son
Putin speaking English is the weirdest thing I watched on RUclips. He became a whole different person when he opened his mouth.
He seems to speak English with a French accent, somehow. Perhaps he learned it in France or with a French teacher?
@@DanielGalimidi no, Russian who try to emitate English sometime tend to speak this way
Speaking English was a required skill for a KGB operative.....
Putin once held a speech in the German parliament, the Bundestag. He spoke German the whole time. That was quite impressive. Putin was stationed in Berlin in the 80s.
Angela Merkel is also fluent in Russian. I wonder in which language they communicate face to face.
It sounds a little bit like a polite german person speaking English. Don´t judge me.
Lee Hsien Loong, the Pm of Singapore, is actually a Native English speaker. You will be surprised to learn how many "Native" English speakers there are in Singapore. The problem is that we tend to mix different words, and sometimes even switch languages mid-way speaking. This is why most Singaporeans are bilingual, and basically have two native languages, depending on their ethnicity.
isnt singpaore english speaking officialy?
@@ltagames01 it’s one of the official languages as well as chinese, hindi and malay 😊
@@spencermercer7622tamil not hindi lol
as a foreigner (indian) living in singapore, i feel like a bit of a loser when the only language i understand on mrt announcements and signs is english 😭😭 however, when i’m speaking to someone in english and they have a few random words in other languages, even if i don’t know exactly what the words mean, i can usually fully understand them. but after three years here stuff like can, lah, sia and others have become part of my daily vocabulary too 💀 (except it sounds a bit strange because i still have an indian accent)
That's called code switching
Boris johnson sounds like he's trying to explain to his teacher why he's late to class
😄😄😄😄
😂😂
Ho heeee wiff waof waaa its big borris
Govey govey govey said Mr Gove
He doesn't brush his hair
So exactly like his English???
fun fact: Schwarzenegger wasn't allowed to do the German dub for "Terminator" because his accent was considered too rural. It'd be like if a Hillbilly voiced Wall - E or something.
There's an in-joke about this in a deleted scene from Terminator 3. The Skynet people are watching a promo video of the Terminator android (played by Arnold) but he speaks with a thick American southern hick accent. And one of the executives turns to another and says "we can change the accent."
Not too rural.Too Austria dialect.
@@kriegshammer2161 Rural Austria to be fair, but in all honesty that kinda covers 95% of Austria :D
or hagrid
@@kriegshammer2161 Well... I mean, basically an austrain dialect outside of the vienna one could be considered somewhat rural. Though the idea of a Wiener Schmäh terminator is pretty hilarious, not gonna lie.
Putin in Russian: *gargles asphalt while wrestling a bear*
Putin in English: *High Welcome to Chilli’s*
He sounds the same in both languages, he just masks his high pitched voice better in Russian, he still has a rather mild accent like many from St Petersburg.
East Germany ... uniting and dividing to this day. I tzust aszk you: watt is perfect Russian?
HA HA HA!! no better way to say that! So right! I laughed so out loud with your comment!
YeH
@@maxheadrom3088 Are you in the right comment thread?
As someone who speaks both fluent English and Chinese, I say that it's pretty impressive that Kevin Rudd can speak Chinese so well.
I can speak English, American, British, Australian, and Canadian
Only 5? It's a little embarrassing that you can't speak New Zealandish, Jamaican and Bajan
Brad die Irriterend III little bit of Dutch never hurt no one
same
So many languages!How could you don't mix them then you speak?
i am a beast
The popes aren’t that great at English because international communication within the Church is done in Latin, so they are more proficient at that language.
Also, most of them have to learn ancient Greek, Hebrew, Italian. If they would have to learn Engish it is really a lot of work!
Yeah, even JP2 struggled a bit with his English. He was good enough at it but he didn't consider himself fluent. He wasn't even all that good at Italian when he was first elected.
In the end, he was entirely fluent in Polish, German, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and maybe even French (?)
It's mostly Italian
Francis had noticed (as had his superiors in the Society of Jesus back before his becoming a bishop and then Pope) his weakness in English, and he had spent three months at an Irish theological college to learn English.
Interesting
The funny thing about Arnold is that his accent is arguably more noticeable when he speaks German. In English, he just has "a German accent". In German, he has a truly overwhelmingly powerful South German/Austrian accent.
It combines with a weird American accent and sounds pretty bizarre
So its more of a situation of him being ashamed about his accent (heard that he has was declined from doing his own dubs), rather than forgotten german?
@@themfwestcoast the whole decline doing his own dubs is that his austrian accent is very hick and southern which wouldn't make sense for the terminator, a perfect machine to speak hickish german
@@themfwestcoast yeah kind of. At least in NRW we very much enjoy mocking the austrian accent
@@Ace_-ep5vr tbh i would have loved a terminator with his original accent i would crack up laughing every second
I had a classmate once who thought in Japanese 100% of the time, and while speak English (her fourth language) she was translating from Japanese to Spanish and then from Spanish to English. This was because she learned English, from Spanish speaking teachers, who did not speak Japanese. Holding a conversation with someone who is thinking in Japanese, but speaking with a really thick Mexican accent, while being clearly ethnically Samoan is a good way to be reminded that the world is a wondrously varied place.
She told that she thinks American English speakers have a weird linguistic superpower that we don't know we have. She observed that we are able to freely make up and understand slang, on the spot, and extremely fluidly. She said that it's part of the reason it can be difficult to learn English, in America. She gave me examples which made sense to me, but after she explained how terrible they translated into either Spanish _or_ Japanese, I started to see what she was saying. She actually thought it was really interesting. The way some of us freely use nouns as verbs or the way we can make sense of statements like, "The whole world markets together, because first the Mongols, then Napolean." suggests that our linguistic centers are always awake. She said couldn't decide if thought we should all have an easier time becoming bilingual than we realize, or if it's the reason we struggle to.
This is the coolest thing, amazing
very keen observation by your friend/super interesting comment 👍
To be fair, any language can make slangs in any time when they want to. It's not an american speciality.
Also english is difficult anywhere in the world, that's one of the worst options to learn as a foreign language, from how chaotic it is. And english natives has hard time with language learning because their native language lacks a lot of concepts that lot of other languages has. You guys even lost your case system and grammatical gender system that you had in the past.
And not from bad, but she literally did one of those things what people should avoid when speacking in a different language, and that thing is the translating in your head, lot of people says that it's the best if you build up your sentences in that language from the start instead of translating from other languages. And to be fair, those people are right about this.
I’m a native english speaker and i have no idea what the hell you’re talking about when you say that part about “the whole world markets together”.
@@kittencorp.3295 We ended up with a global economy because Napolean enforced lasting economic reforms that exploited the trade routes established by the Mongolians.
For anyone learning English: please know that the vast majority of us native speakers don't care that you have an accent like the people in this video. I love hearing different accents, and i think most can agree with me!
Indian accent is just too bad for me and also some sub-saharian accents are quite bad.
@@fuguthefish dam what's wrong with you lol
@@sidecharacter2613 What is wrong in saying that some accents are really hard to understand, more exactly? :)))
@@fuguthefish ig bad was the wrong word to use. But as an Indian, it quit okay with us if you have trouble understanding our accent. We just speak more slowly than most others, and pronounce all the letter properly as the concept of silent letters isnt too prevalent in most of our native languages. I think that is basically where we differ.
@@fuguthefish Indian accent sounds really cool and at the same time funny
If someone doesn't have a good accent in any language, that doesn't mean that they aren't good or even almost fluent in that language. Accents and fluency in a language are two very different things.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
@@juliag.3584 Yeah exactly I really hate it when someone make fun of other people's accent and pronunciation while being ignorant and just speak his own language
It’s extremely sad when someone makes fun of people’s accent, especially when it’s associated to “being dumb”
Especially with English the dental fricatives are of importance when it comes to fluency. Most non-native speakers pronounce those as alveolar fricatives, which makes them less fluent in English. For the rest I agree with you.
You’re right, of course, having an accent does not mean you do not dominate the language. But it does affect how well people will understand you. Not because of your fault, not because of their. Its just like that. I often even struggle understanding germans from the south of germany because of their accent, bespike they speak the same language as I. Its just a bigger effort to follow people with an accent, and there isnt really a thing we can do about it.
Fun fact: Every Pope has to speak Italian, even the ones from non-Italian backgrounds.
@Luboman411 Pope Benedict speaks excellent French with a gruesome Bavarian accent and Francis is fluent in German and a few other languages.
Well, the English speaking countries tend to be Protestant, as well.
A leader has to speak the language of his home country, in this case the Vatican City.
@@Wonderingax indeed. In addition to his native Spanish, Francis is also conversant in Latin (the official language of the Holy See), he speaks fluent Italian (the official language of Vatican City and the "everyday language" of the Holy See), German, French, Portuguese, English, and he understands the Piedmontese language and some Genoese.
@@fotoralf As someone who speaks a bit of Italian, hearing Pope Francis speak it is kind of hilarious because even I can tell that he has a very strong Spanish-speaker’s accent
this guy wasn't a politician but he could still speak English, French, German and I do believe he could also speak Russian, Swedish, Greek, Spanish and Italian. his name was Sir Christopher Lee and he was a native English speaker.
ah yeah, i remember having watched a video. It is really impressive at what level of skilfulness he masters so many tongues.
That guy was pretty cool, he's casted some nice roles and played them well.
Count Duku is indeed a gentleman
A moment of silence for Sir Lee, one of the most respected and accomplished men of the 20th and 21st centuries. Respects
@Seán Ó Laocha well, that's how I first knew about him😅
As a nativ German speaker I could say that Arnold is still very good in German there is no American accent there is only his Austrian accent
Die Steirische Eiche.
He has a very broad Austrian accent in English.
Isnt that his native language though?
@@mpforeverunlimited Germin is just Austrian has some difference like mum and mom in Australian and US English.
I speak some German since my dad is German but I speak it like a donkey
On the defense of the Pope, he does speak a lot more languages than the average person. Argentine Spanish, Italian, German, French and Portuguese are among the languages he is comfortable speaking.
Also Latin
William Alfonso also he might focus on the languages spoken in catholic countries
The Pope is indefensible
@@mybigyear Well he was clearly defended.
Argentine isn’t a language... It’s a dialect of Spanish from Argentina
i love how boris stutters like he does in english
He also fakes his British accent, and probably has to put effort into speaking Queen's English rather than American English. Remember he is American by birth and grew up in the US. He only renounced his US citizenship when he was elected to Parliament.
@@mrvwbug4423 not sure about that. he didn't live in the US later than the age of 5, and both his parents are posh english people. though his accent is totally affected, by all accounts he adopted it consciously while studying at Eton as a teenager.
@@mrvwbug4423 he was born in the US yeah but his parents took him back to the uk the same year he was born
Its kinda funny lol
@@mrvwbug4423 "grew up in the US" he spent 4 years in the US between the ages of 0 and 5, all of his schooling was done in Belgium and the UK, wtf do you mean? Every person that was born on US soil has a US citizenship from birth so I don't see how that's relevant. He also had British citizenship as his father was British.
When it comes to Scandinavia, for example, it is no wonder that they find it easy to learn English. The languages are closely related. Finland, on the other hand, has made a fantastic journey in terms of learning languages. Those who understand how different Finnish is from other languages understand.
Im a turk and our language is kinda similar to finnish as they are both agglutinative languages
I'm from Sweden and I think subtitling is the biggest reason why scandinavian people is so good at English. If you talk to older people today, some speak English, but going back 30-40 years, almost no 60+ person could speak English despite the similarities. Sweden still had subtitles back then but fewer american/english shows aired.
Finnish isn't even Indo European, it is Uralic and related to Hungarian,so yeah it is entirely different from other European languages. And yes it does sound like having a little turkic influence
There’s a theory that posits that English actually a Nordic language
Finnish is related to Sami (Lapp), Estonian, Hungarian and various linguist groups in what is now Russia.
That Putin clip was kinda freaky, his mouth moves really weird almost like a deep fake
He is quite uncomfortable with pronunciation which makes me believe that he isn't fluent at all. He looks way more comfortable speaking German.
@@_Epsilon_ can confirm, his german is immaculate
Spot on. Looked digitally "Russianed"
@@_Epsilon_ Its almost like he was a KGB agent in East German for a decade :P but yeah, really interesting stuff to hear
@ Yeah I can definitely imagine, it goes the same way when we english speakers try to speak slavic languages
Putin looks like he's lip-syncing to his own voice over with a Chinese accent in a Hong Kong Kung Fu flick.
They’re allowed to have entertainment in China? Wow, learn something new every day.
I thought he looked more like Mr. Bean trying to speak
@@The_Real_Slim_Shadow94 surprising isn't it ? (In all seriousness they do have some good cinema and animation).
@@ThatDamnPandaKai 😂😂 he does strike completely differently when he speaks English. He looks almost gentle
@@qwertybear.7120 😋😂
also, accent has nothing to do with fluency, you can have a very strong accent and have strong academic level knowledge of the language
And vice versa! I can speak 4 languages with native or near-native accents, but I'm only completely fluent in English (the others being French, Mandarin, Japanese). It's actually kind of weird because the moment you say one or two sentences with a natural accent, people assume you're totally fluent.
@@radiantrealms awesome example! :D
That's what I thought when I heard the Indian Prime Minister. He was fluent in Indian English. Just because he speaks with the Indian inflection doesn't mean he isn't fluent.
Sorta feel like this might be my situation, I'm natively danish but have been involved in online communities since like age 11 so I can write English perfectly well but I rarely ever speak it out loud so even though I know exactly how words are supposed to be pronounced from youtubers and such I just can't say them. Like I learned from the virus that I can't get the Q in quarantine down.
@@radiantrealms Despite being a fellow polyglot; I have to say... I'm a little jealous!
The Schwarzenegger and Kissinger thing is really interesting. I can't imagine, as an English speaker, forgetting how to speak English. It's so entrenched.
As a native German speaker, I can say that Kissinger is indeed difficult to understand. He speaks a weird mix of German with a slight American accent and his regional Franconian accent. But Schwarzenegger still speaks German like a native. I love his Austrian accent. :D
I relate to them as I’m in a similar situation. Though as the above comment said, Schwarzenegger is still pretty understandable. He has a thick accent but most of it is from his region of origin rather than from English since german can be a very complicated language when it comes to regional dialects. Kissinger is just sadly not that good at German anymore though
@@lebendigesgespenst7669 Agree on Schwarzenegger. With Kissinger I'm not quite shure if some of his "bad" german comes from the fact that he is just pretty old. I looked into some recent english interviews of him and he doesn't sound that "fluent" there eighter. Even though it is a bit better there. He just speaks with many pauses in both languages.
@@lenab5266 I have also seen someone else in this comment section talk about how his German doesn't just have a Swiss accent, it's a Swiss accent as spoken decades ago, when he was younger. Imagine a person who grew up in the American South in the 1950's left the country when they were about 10 to live in France and they never moved back. Not only would his English have a Southern drawl, he would be using vocabulary that was around in that time period rather than vocabulary that has cropped up since.
Native Russian speaker who moved to the US when I was very young. I spoke Russian at home, but throughout school and with my friends English became used far more.
I’m 22 now and almost completely lost my ability to speak Russian. Long road ahead to relearn it lol, Russian is incredibly difficult to learn
Putin's mouth movement when he talks in English looks like when Mr. Bean talks.
How's your Russian and German that Putin also speaks?
@@starcorpvncj What?
I honestly don’t blame him. Russian and English are such insanely different languages that it’s probably the lingual version of making him run in high heels.
I thought it was a deepfake at first it looked so unnatural
@@MortalWombat4480 different, yes. Insanely different? They're both Indo-European languages. If you think Russian and English are still share a lot of similarities. Otherwise, if you think they are 'insanely different' what do you think when English is compared to non-Indo-European languages?
I was working in Munich Germany about 20 years ago. An American couple asked me for directions. After helping them out they walked on and I heard one of them tell the other "wow her English is really good".
Being English, I would hope my mother tongue was up to par lol
Omg lol I just got secondhand embarrassment from those couple
Well, I guess you could also take that as "Wow she looks super German!"
I was in Hamburg and asked a question in a store. people looked at me as if I just swallowed a dog. only one burly man understood and answered in broken English
British English or American English?
@@thekillers1stfan I seriously can’t tell brits or Germans apart
Here in South Korea every single president from 1948 until 2003 spoke 100% fluent Japanese because all of them where educated during the Japanese occupation period. President Park Jung Hee who ruled South Korea from 1960 to 1979 was even a graduate from imperial Japanese military academy.
But what is interesting is that all of those presidents even including president Park refused speaking Japanese when having summit talks with Japanese prime ministers. They would always have their personal translators with them even though they understood Japanese 100%. It was obviously because they wanted to be shown as a nationalistic and patriotic figure. But when they retired they were often given interviews with Japanese medias and people were surprised at how well they kept their Japanese skills even after all those years.
That is not surprising at all considering the history between your nations. In fact, I suspect that is the reason why Henry Kissinger preferred not to speak German as well.
Very interesting. Thanks.
Can you link some examples? I'm curious
@@enduser8410 ruclips.net/video/cejoFCVzCs0/видео.html This is former president Kim Young Sam having interview with Japanese media.
@bbonner422 who told you that? Must have been an avid supporter of president Moon, who is ruining this country right now
east germans were taught russian as their second language in place of west german english during germany’s occupation
when i did a student exchange in germany one of my friends was placed with a family from east germany and it meant he could only really communicate with their children as they learned russian as children
I know this video is old, but I think Abe Shinzo speaks fluent English. He even studied in the US for a year and a half. If you listen to his speeches in Japanese, he delivers them in the same weird, halting manner. That's just how he speaks. Like a weirdo.
I did not expect this comment and now I am wheezing with laughter, thank you
separate each words and say them clearly and slowly is how Japanese speaks in situations like that so that people can understand well. But he speaks too slow lol
His Abe family all are bunch of weirdos. They all read BL manga in secret but doesn't support LGBTQ+
@Zypher ?
Reading another language is 1 type of comprehension(I find it the easiest), while hearing comprehension is another type of understanding and speaking still another.. It's MUCH easier to give a speech that you prepare, proofread etc than it is to understand thoughts, concepts etc.. Especially if there's innuendo involved
13:37 People might think Boris' French isn't great, but he speaks like that in English as well.
Very true! 👏
Did someone say 1337
What do you call a complete nutcase who doesn't speak even one language? Non-lingual?
It is fairly commun for fast talkers in their native language tripping in a second-language that they don't master fluently. One suggestion I could give Englisgh speakers learning French is to slow down your speech. French is more monotone than English, so accentuation and timing is less oimportant than in English.
@@Christian_Martel Hundred percent this
Singapore's official language is English. So there's nothing surprising about the prime minister being so good at it.
It's one of the official languages
@@tanyasellars7492 Yeah, but english is the main langauge though
MoonRabbit Dylan Yes but English is the main language used for schools, businesses and government. Other official languages are just mother tongue languages.
Lee can speak in English, Melayu (but the accent is like Indonesian), and Chineese .
It's confusing how the Philippines has the most understandable accent in south east Asia
Honestly I love hearing the different accents people have when speaking english and I find it interesting how depending on how and where you learn english you cant end up adopting that place or person's accent.
As a German native speaker I can tell you: Even though Schwarzenegger speaks in a dialect, his German is much more convincing than Kissinger's German is.
What do you mean by convincing? Easy to understand?
@@londoncrow500 better
@@wingedhussar1117 I think I'm dumb, I didn't understand what you mean by better
@@londoncrow500 Look, in my native language, we say "überzeugend" (which means "convincing" or "compelling") - not only when we talk about arguments or evidence, but also when we want to say that something leaves a good impression.
So when I say "Someone's German is convincing", I don't mean that he or she is trying to convince us of something specific, but that he or she does a better job at convincing us of his ability to speak German.
Maybe "convincing" cannot be used in that way in English and this is simply a language mistake :)
@@wingedhussar1117 Oh I see. By the way is do German schools teach English?
Schwarzenegger's German is pretty good actually. He's got a strong Styrian accent so I can see why it would sound strange to folks from Germany, but he seems fluent enough in that one clip.
Kissinger did pretty alright too; quite remarkable if you take into account the fact that he fled Germany more than 80 years ago, at age 15. His reluctance to speak the language may stem from the historical connotations he associates it with.
gotta love that Austrian accent
@@Ninja-Alinja Have you watched the video?
PAXperMortem sorry, let me rephrase that. I basically agree but miss-understood your point when reading it first, never mind.
About Kissinger, it’s remarkable how he doesn’t sound “Austrian” at all, which is quite a feat for an Austrian.
@@Ninja-Alinja kissinger is franconian iirc
Reportedly Schwarzenegger wasn't allowed to voice the Terminator in the German dub because the regional accent was so specific as not to match the character.
Putin sounds so goofy speaking English, I expected him to have this deep menacing voice and we have that of a puberty ridden teenager with severe social anxiety.
St Petersburg accent, he clearly doesn't speak English much and is not well practiced. He can mask the high voice a bit more in Russian, but even listening to him in Russian he has the mild accent typical of St Petersburg.
He is a fluent German speaker though...
Remember that he sounds exactly the same in russian. There is a reason ukrainians call him a dickhead
@@slashslash501 Oh, Crimea river! I think there may be other reasons...
@@thossbach635 Yes, wasn't he a KGB agent in East Germany?
pretty weird seeing that clip of Abe knowing he was shot dead just 5 years later (the clip is from February 2017)
Putin's face when he's speaking English is just hilarious.
And he sounds like he is on dubbing.
his german is way better than his english
I actually think that's the real reason he doesn't speak English in public. It's not because he's nationalistic, it's because he's not very graceful at speaking English. Putin wants to appear uber-competent at everything he does, but it clearly appears unnatural for him to speak the English tongue.
I believe it's because he's self conscious.
Davey I think English feels very unnatural for many Russians. So they have told me
Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks a perfect German with a strong austrian accent.
He’s a native of Austria
@@fitofight8540 Not to mention I’m pretty sure he’s from rural Austria.
His father was in the ss
German is austrian's native language
@@moniho6907 Yes, but he's from an area with a very distinct accent that even other Austrians sometimes have trouble understanding.
On the German speaking politicians:
- Arnold Schwarzenegger comes from a very rural area in Austria, and so his pronunciation is, by default, unique. However the only thing that is different is that his dialect is becoming less and less audible. other than that his grammar is perfectly good.
- Kissinger seems to speak a little less fluently than a native, but his accent is much more standard.
in conclusion, one is probably self-conscious about his accent, the other about his fluency, but hopefully this shows why they might be so reluctant to speak German (btw I speak German)
Schwarzenegger, the pride of the University of Wisconsin - Superior!
Not sure if true, but heard that he offered to use his own voice for The Terminator in German, but the translators turned him down. Seems it would be like a big evil cyborg talking like Larry the Cable Guy (git err dunn). 😗
Kissinger's accent sounded a bit Bavarian, right?
@@ozza4496 Yes, hes from the city of Fürth, close to Nürnberg, originally.
I learnt German. When I heard Arnie speaking German, I thought to myself "Cool Arnie learnt some German. Good for him!". He just didn't sound like a native-speaker to me.
fun fact: stalin spoke english with an irish accent since he was taught by an irishman
Schwarzenegger isnt that bad at german, he just speaks austrian german, that sometimes sounds very different
Yeah his German sounds really good
@@Stefan-st jo genau
@@Stefan-st No it's the Styrian dialect. He was born in Thal which is near Graz.
Austrian Standard German, one of the three major German Standards of High German.
The other two are German Standard German and Swiss Standard German.
Sounds like Hitler german
As a German, I was happy that Merkel was mentioned
She’s always polite when she apologises for her “not good English”
I actually think hers is perfectly fine because German pronunciation is so different
She's not polite, she's submissive.
@@morzhed-hoqh732 excuse you! Wtf?!
@@phoenixfeathers4128 C’est la pure réalité ! We Europeans and Germany in the lead have lost all pride. Merkel shouldn't speak English. She is the head of greater Germany. The Germans have a treasure: The German language!
@@morzhed-hoqh732 what exactly would be the territory of greater Germany in modern times?
@@Pike737 The greatness of Germany does not lie in the size of its territory! This is the great mistake of the German nation… Germany is great for the best she has produced; its architecture, its philosophy, its literature, its music, its science ... What a pity that so much beauty and grandeur is eclipsed by the memory of war.
I literally shot milk out of my nose after hearing Putin speak English. The sort of laugh I wish I caught on camera.
I laught too, but then I realised that I'm russian and my accent is not far away from his...
@@Sineri-rj6nw hack, I'm Romanian and I have the same accent :D
but after you hear it, it just fits him somehow. is this just me?
Putin did once adress the German Parliament in German, when he was on a state visit.
So look that up, if you want to blast milk again.
I imagined his voice to be way deeper and more intimidating but he instead sounds more like someone that talks in kids shows (no offense)
As a Swede (one of the top three countries with the highest level of English fluency) I can tell you that I even dream in English many times. Daily I think about a word in English but where I can't come up with the corresponding word in Swedish. Damn it 😄
My friends and family are used to my codeswitching because my brain will immediately fill any gaps in my native Spanish with English. Native English speakers find surprising that my accent is more "British" because every Latin American they know speaks with an American accent.
@@teresarivasugaz2313 sound like we have the same issue but that you speak Spanish and I Swedish. What country are you from?
@@northbreeze0111 🇵🇪🇵🇪🇵🇪🇵🇪 😃
@@teresarivasugaz2313 Peru! Nice. Would love to go there one day. From Lima?
Were you a british colony or something like that?
8:08 in East Germany, people didn't learn English, they have learned Russian.
Same with most occupied countries at the time, like Poland and Lithuania etc.
that's not completely true - beginning in the late 70s, the east german school kids had the chance to learn English beginning from 7th grade, as long as they were good in Russian.
@@MickeyKnox but nobody wanted to be good in Russian because of hate to Russians.
Same in the Czech republic, but nowadays many Czechs under 35 have good English skills.
That’s literally what he was saying. Did you not listen to the part where he said that her living in East Germany is most likely the reason why?
I cannot imagine a more German name than Helmut Schmidt.
Adolf Hitler. Pretty sure that's more German than Helmut Schmidt. 😉
@@loumorningstar7709 Adolf Hitler was Austrian.
@@loumorningstar7709 I don’t believe it is, Adolf isn’t a very harsh sounding name, so to me it doesn’t come off sounding very Germanic.
@@leepreston9637 Actualy Hitler was Austrian in name only.
Hitlers village of Braunau-Inn was a part of the German confederate states. When Prussia brought together the German city states, many villages were left out of the Reich, and Hitler’s village was one of them. His village was on border between German Reich and Austria and he always considered himself German and so did his family and every family in the area he was born.
@@loumorningstar7709 And his real name was Adolf Schenkelhofer or was it Schenkelhober, but it was something like that
I love the fact that Arnold momentarily broke from German to say "I'll be back"!
Kissinger's accent is kind if intelligible, he sounds like that grandpa who settled in the US and became too American. Arnold's accent sounds perfectly fine, but with an Austrian accent tho
Just wanted to mention, Boris' french is not that good lol
Kissinger seems to fit that description really well. A grandfather spending too much time in America.
am french and yeah you're absolutely right about boris.....he sucks at it.....he kinda has a good accent but is totally unable to say anything that makes sense
@@Alex-uv3td If it is because of the constant stuttering that's not necessarily because of his french, that's just how he speaks
ruclips.net/video/cIFhVvqpXaw/видео.html
@@Alex-uv3td Boris tends to speak with a stutter between words in English. It's even harder for him in French. Funny thing is though, he can perfectly recite the Illyad in Ancient Greek
I believe Arnold is from Austria, right? Regards from DK.
Macron’s English is perfectly fine, he just has a strong French accent.
Yeah, I was going to say this. I've heard him speak English a lot and he's actually really good at it. He just pronounces some words in a really French way.
In fact, I find his accent a bit like how French guys should speak English... It's like a bit caricature..
That sort of English would get someone laid in America really quickly, lmao 😂😂😂
Agree
It's not even that strong. I've spent quite some time in French-speaking countries and I've heard some thick accents. Macron's is fine imho, totally intelligible.
I would hope that the PM of Singapore speaks English well, considering it’s the official language. I am not sure his “good” English skills are an artifact of him studying abroad.
I think the impressive part is Singapore PMs are fluent in at least 3 languages to address the different races of that country.
Singaporean English is broke anyway, he speaks English better than most Singaporeans
He has a pretty aristocratic-sounding British influence though, that's what I was trying to highlight. I am annoyed at this sequence because in the script I also was going to show the prime minister of Pakistan, who also went to school in the UK and has a very posh accent but I forgot to record that line 🤦♂️
@@JJMcCullough Seeing how both of his parents were top of their class in cambridge and it being his Alma mater - the only way for his upbringing to be more posh is for him to walk around with a cane while smoking a large pipe.
@@JJMcCullough Yes,I was wondering why you didn't talk about him..
I'm eternally jealous of people who can speak multiple languages so well. I'm American and I took spanish classes for 12 years in school, but without any practical application of the language outside of the classroom (along with a generally poor aptitude for foreign languages on my part) I could never get beyond the most basic of sentences. And now that it's been 5-6 years since my last spanish class, I couldn't even begin to humor a conversation in the language.
Arnold's German: A++
Kissinger's German: B-/C
Thats all I have to say.
Kissinger has forgotten his German, where as Arnold, thanks to his accent, has retained it and is almost indistinguishable from a Steiermark native speaker, as if he never left.
Kissinger's English is as bad as his German.
Tbf to Kissinger he's also been in America for far longer and is obviously way older than Arnold, as well as immigrating to America at a younger age than Arnold. So I think those are probably the main reasons Arnold is better at German.
"That's all I have to say"
*proceeds to continue to say*
As a non German speaker, Arnold sounded smoother the way he talked continuously, as oppose to Kissinger who pause between phrases
I dont speak German but Arnold sounds way more natural when speaks German compared to his English
Poor Vladimir has shape-shifted when he started talking in English. I thought something horrible had happened to him
😂😂😂😂
Threatening us with a good time
He had a peanut butter sandwich before his speech.
I think he's doing his best not to mess up, so he moves his mouth to emphasize the pronunciations.
I am guessing that is partly why he does not speak English. He can not project power as much as he can do when he speaks Russian. And of course there are nationalistic reason to, I think. Image is really important for Putin. But who know what language an Ex-KGB agent knows.
As an English speaker who learned spanish later in life i can say that i have alot of empathy for people who speak with strong accents in their second language. For whatever reason some people physically have struggles no matter how fluent they get
"I will Polish my English" - Donald Tusk, former President of the European Council and Prime Minister of Poland
Shit like this is why Poland hates him isn’t it?
trump, tusk
coincidence
i think not
@@joshkusiak7613 not everybody hates him, mostly Law and Justice Party supportes
@kimi Im British and he is one of the reasons my country wanted to leave, he is a fear mongeror, and although I voted remain, I dont like him.
@@kadz3597 Luckily, many people hate Law And Justice.
Unless we're talking about religious old ladies in the rural areas. I'm pretty sure that's where they're getting majority of their support from
Macron: "...ze twenty-first century *hath* brought..."
Who knew, he speaks Shakespearean English!
Macron is lisping in French, and it shows even more in English. Plus he has the ultra typical French accent. He is the first French president to have a fair grasp of English though, so we can give him this credit at least.
S. Calabrese afaik French doesn’t actually have a ‘th’ sound. So it wouldn’t be natural for him to pronounce those words
@@adamanderson4811 Often though when French-natives learn english they learn the th sound, but end up overcorrecting, or adding the sound where it doesn't belong.
Funny how French and German people (can confirm as a German) both have the same problems when learning English. Its always the "th" sounds lol. Most Germans who have a stronger accent when they're speaking English pronounce it "ze" and some pronounce it "de"
I used to pronounce it as "de" to completely avoid the struggle with "th" sounds
@@_erik_2138 Even some Native Speakers pronounce it 'd' like the Irish for exanple. It's just a very rare sound across different languages.
Funnily enough though it doesn't appear in a lot of languages, but some of the few ones where it does exist are all extremely wide-spread: English, Spanish, Arabic...
When this guy said "about" I could instantly tell he is probably Canadian
Aboout
That’s exactly what I think too.
Same !
Same
_A boot._
He might not be a politician, but I find Roald Dahl's (a famous children's book writer) linguistic skills quite fascinating as a Norwegian. Dahl was born in the UK to immigrants from Norway, and Norwegian was his first language. He did an interview for the NRK in 1989, and I can tell that his Norwegian is very rusty; probably, he has spent so much of his life in Britain that his native language has weakened over time, much like with Kissinger and his German.
I am in a similar situation. My parents are belgian and I was born in the US. Since I haven't been living with my parents my french has gotten noticeably worse. Like, my accent hasn't gotten worse but I tend to forget words more
“Boris Johnson can speak French...”
Proceeds to show a video of him stumbling as much as I did in my high school French class
He had issues taking out the words but most of his pronunciations were PERFECT. It's pretty rare cause most English speakers can't pronounce french correctly. He kept the good pronunciation from his childhood in Wallonia, but if u know in what walloon province he was living in, tell me
This isn't the best clip of him. There are other videos where he speaks it perfect and doesn't stutter. I also imagine Boris may not speak it very often with being a PM for Britain.
Have you seen him speaking English? Not much different.
Honestly couldn't tell if he was stuttering or speaking French
True hahaha, his accent is pretty good tho
Putin looks like he’s talking without teeth when speaking English
Trust me, you'd never learn russian without an accent because it's hard to speak both russian and english without accents
My native language is Russian and i can tell you that it's very hard to articulate and make a clear, coherent sound in English(Basically Putin trying to talk without accent and the only way is to do these weird mouth, tongue movements) . Probably that's because different muscles are involved while speaking Russian, idk ;)
@@walperaph205 Зависит от человека и от практики. У меня родной русский но на английском я тоже иногда думаю
Well, when you start speak Russian, your prononciation will be probably chicken-like. Don't be so proud because of your so called "international" language. Times will changes.
@@dmitrikaljuznoi1323 У меня тоже самое, но я говорю именно про произношение на английском. Когда я пытаюсь произнести что-то на английском без акцента приходится производить такие странные движения ртом, дабы язык не заплелся, ну и чтоб была понятная речь "без акцента"))
I had a friend from Denmark, who became quite upset when she began dreaming in English. Prior to that moment all of us including her husband conversed with her in Danish in her Dreams and she didn’t find that odd, despite the fact none of us could speak Danish.
wat
what..
This is actually super interesting and not something people like me who only speak English would ever think about. Thanks for sharing
LMAOOOO
She is becoming one of us. One of us, one of us.
6:20 As someone from the Netherlands, it's interesting to hear you point to Rutte as an example for someone who's quite good at English, given that his strong Dutch accent when speaking English is regularly poked fun at in our own media.
“Sorry Latin, you had a good run!”
“French, A for effort”
Esperanto: “I really didn’t have a chance, did I?”
"no, no you didn't"
Well also the fact that the Nazis, Soviets, and Japanese all murdered Esperantists didn’t help
I really think esperanto should replace english and be the universal language, because it is not associated with any culture. Learning a language is a really great thing fort the mind and the person but when the influence of one language is too big, it comes wiith the danger of acculturation, which french canadian and québécois are afraid of. It is really hard to understand it when litteraly everything that defines you as a nation isnt being put in danger.
TyRayPlow French is stil the diplomats language, isn’t it?
@@stefdnk4428 no, its English
When former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was campaigning for president, an old video of him speaking English resurfaced, and his pronunciation was so bad the opposition even produced some ads attacking him for his lack of English abilities. The most infamous bit was when he tried to pronounce “infrastructure”, and even to this day, it’s still the punchline of many jokes aimed at his unpopular presidency.
But now tables have turned, and now we have an ancient SOB who cannot speak a single word of English, barely any Spanish, and won't even go out of the country for international summits because he knows he won't fool them like he fooled the Mexican people
Also, yeah, I thought JJ would talk about Peña
George Doty-Williams I think we can be somewhat forgiving of him on that regard. He’s from a generation that didn’t have the necessity to learn English, and he certainly didn’t have the most privileged early years, unlike other politicians, whose families have been influential for many generations. Obviously I disagree on the way he’s running the country though.
One time Peña was asked what were the last 3 book he read and he couldnt name one aside from the bible lol
@@georgelloydgonzalez amlo is that bad huh?
So where’s our video of “JJ tries to speak French and once again gets denounced by Quebec Parliament!!!!”
J.J refusing to call the Netherlands by it's actual name while repeatedly showing it on screen is a true power move
I am trying to picture Putin's voice with the image of him topless riding a horse and they just don't jive.
Horse? you mean BEAR right
Putin's voice is quite different in English.
"Jibe."
That is a problem of your phantasy but not of Putin's character. In Russian mythology their heroes fight with bears or fly with cranes. Like Americans doing the Rodeo. I can imagine Putin fighting with a bear, but I cannot imagine Trump riding the Rodeo.....lol
Putin didnt ride horse or bear its stupid western mem
In east germany, you could choose between learning russian or english in school, but if you chose english you would get...the loooks
Oh, that poor oppressed Merkel girl had to make an unfair choice between being called second class human by the English language (man-woman paradigm) and making an early career in a female-sounding paradigm of muzhchina-zhenchina (man-woman in Russian, not the same as "man, male" in English) and another entity "chelovek" (Russian for human as "man" of both genders). What a poor girl was that Angela! C'mon, people! Russian language is not as sexist as English, in that sense. Even Polish has this "male" as "chelovek" sexist thing but Russian doesn't. Merkel owns a lot of her self-confidence to the fact she was exposed to a system of both male and female beings being equally oppressed by the owners for many hundreds of years. In-joke. No offense)
@@annneru I'm sorry but what the hell...? Choosing russian in the DDR was normal and not because of grammar and sexism? That shit was like living in north korea
@@annneru I have no idea what you mean. Maybe learn better English before saying English is stupid
My mum was studying both Russian and English in school but okay... However English classes were only about once a week and often cancelled because the teacher was sick. So while they did put more focus on Russian, you could definitely do both.
@@annneru Mucho texto
It kinda sounds like Putin was trying to suppress his accent when speaking English. It sounded strained. To his credit, Russian is a nightmare to learn as well so i'm not gonna judge.
And his Deutsch pretty good
Russian language is not that hard but the grammar is just death
Basically he could speak a lot of languages
Who says russian is hard to learn I know people who learnt to speak it when they were babies.
@@makke2909 yes, but that's bilingual. I'm talking about learning it after or while going through your teenage years.
I loved Merkel ngl she seems so sweet like "I'm so sorry I cannot speak English so well so I'll speak German. Pls forgive me 🥺"
Hang on. Macron is genuinely fluent in English though. I’ve seen long long discussions and interviews where his English is pretty damn good talking about very complex and technical details. His only problem is pronunciation- hardly a shock from a French speaker. Merkel just doesn’t speak English as well, her accent is better (Germanic language helps) but her range and flexibility in the language doesn’t compare. That’s no slight on her at all, she is from a generation where Russian was the second language of choice and so she speaks that fluently (which is a true achievement, tough language!!). Her grasp of English is impressive given it’s an additional language she learned later in life.
I've met East Germans (and Hungarians) in the 80s and most of them spoke better English than Merkel, plus I noticed that they spoke better English than Russian, and preferred to speak English rather than Russian. Merkel having so poor command of English leaves somewhat negative impression on me (like if she grew up in a really hard-core communist environment.)
Maybe Macron's English ability is not surprising in a man who married his English teacher.
@@alkriman4182 she was his history teacher not english and french people have a terrible accent because we make fun of each other for our terible accent witch makes us self consious about it and provent us for accually developing a good one at least it was my experience in school and a lot of people reported the same thing
@@lyoubomiratanassov7357 I don’t know, I grew up in a part of Germany that used to belong to the GDR and there are lots of adults (both Merkel’s age and far far younger) who haven’t learned English at all or have a poor grasp of it.
Not saying it’s great for her to only have a basic grasp of English, but she must have been over thirty when the wall came down. At that age learning a second language can pose quite a challenge, especially if you do not have a natural aptitude for languages
Macron doesn't get a pass. It's fair to insult his english because if you went to france and spoke french at the same level they would beat you and dump you in the Atlantic ocean
Macron sounded pretty fluent to me, just with a STRONG accent. He didn't seem to have trouble
Difficult to take away the French accent
same with most of those leaders, they speak fluent english but they still have a strong accent
Macron's English is solid, his predecessor François Hollande could barely form a sentence
@@starfthegreat Yeah and you should listen to the others French presidents : they're so funny. Especially Pompidou.
Him and the Japanese leader obviously knew what they were saying but struggled to say it so spoke slowly and very accented.
"Boris Johnson is fluent in French"
Meanwhile BoJo speaking French:
*Speaks maybe one sentence and says "uhm uh" fifty times*
That's how he speaks in English as well to be fair...
Thats him in English too.... lol
Wasn't surprised at all. That's basically just how he talks.
That's unfair. The clip chosen for the video is a particularly unflattering one. Here (ruclips.net/video/aPN82yg7L4k/видео.html) you can hear him have a conversation in french over a subject he is actually comfortable with.
Also, on an unrelated note, hearing Johnson speak french made me realize that, once you dissociate it from the man himself, he actually has a pretty good voice.
Well, he learned it when he was a kid and most likely didn't speak it that much afterwards, so maybe it's not perfect, but I think he can understand French
Kissinger's German is so interesting. I think it kinda got stuck at the young age when he moved to America and while the German language as a whole developed from then, his German stayed the same. In particular, he is using a lot of "Präteritum" tense which isn't really a thing we often do anymore in spoken language. It also makes me think he might be from northern Germany since that's more prevalent there and he is speaking in a pretty standard accent, not a dialect.
Kissinger is actually from Bavaria, hahahaha.
It's actually extremely common for languages to get "stuck in time" moving across continents, especially small pockets of people. There were Dutch enclaves in Iowa speaking 200 year old Dutch, mostly because they hadn't been getting any influence from back home
Bolsonaro can barely speak Portuguese. His son was recently mocked for his bad English (guy wanted to be Brazilian ambassador in Washington)
Lee Hsien Loong's first language is actually English. In fact, the most common first language in Singapore is English even though the majority are ethnic Chinese.
Most Singaporeans speak English like a first language. The variety of groups that live there is a pretty big factor
Yeah I was a bit confused when he mentioned Singapore cuz I always thought English was spoken there
Well Singapore was an ex British Territory 🇸🇬🇬🇧
8:18
It's not that east Germany was closed off to the outside world, why Merkel isn't that fluent in English, but it has to do with east Germany. She learned Russian instead of English in school and studied physics in Russia.
Btw Putin speaks fluent German (as he was a spy in Germany).
So if Merkel and Putin meet they can either talk in German or Russian.
Thanks for pointing it out
I also think that the older generation was taught more by writing than by speaking and listening.
Why does this guy has the strongest Canadian accent I’ve ever heard
I'm rly happy you included Schwarzenegger, with Austria being such a small country that is easily forgetable and well, his german is rly good, it's like well he's a native haha.
Fun fact: Schwarznegger couldn't dub his own role in terminator in german, bc his sialect was seen as hillybilly in german
i was looking for someone to say that. no, sorry arnold. you cannot play yourself.
@@DeaconTaylor A darkly funny related fact: Originally OJ Simpson was considered for the role of the Terminator. However, they decided not to cast him because "nobody would believe a nice guy like him could be a killer"
I can only attest to that, since Arnie has to speak very clear high German in order for anyone who is not from Austria to even understand him.
@@jamesdelmontegermanonthemo9711 ih ka Ahnol do vahstehn. wus solls?
I love the fact that there are European hillbillies.
Merkel: *speaks English perfectly fine*
Merkel: "I'm sorry, I'm not very good at this."
Awww. :C I hope someone can give her a confidence boost. Yes, she speaks with an accent, but it's still fairly decent English. She's definitely better than Macron, and he was completely intelligible even with his off pronunciations.
Also, while Putin projects this idea that he speaks Russian on the global stage to show Russian equality to the Anglosphere, I suspect it's also partially because his voice goes up half an octave when he speaks English. He just sounds better in Russian, and that's important for a leader too.
Germans are like this, if they think(not what we think, they think) they aren't good enough for something, they apologize. It's not they don't believe on themselves rather they always find every kind of rational and logical way of approaching things. They really hate time wasting.
Merkel can speak fluent Russian though. She grew up in socialist East Germany, where students learned Russian instead of English as their first foreign language.
I'm pretty sure she's apologising for not continuing speaking in English, not that she believes she is bad in English herself.
She has definitely gotten better in the years and, I think that she speaks privately with the politicians also in English, but just not so much in public at an important and complicated speech, Merkel was not really known for good speeches in Germany, but when she has given a good speech it was mostly abroad in other countries. for example, her speech at Harvard, was one of her best.
@@soldatenkonig383 Germans don't really like to speak english, they like it when you try to speak their language tho. . And there are those who hate you and doesn't matter how hard you try, they will look down on you just because you are a foreigner.. 3 of us(the only ones who this guy could talk with) left the work just because of that one guy, the "Teamleiter"... He was anythign but a leader.. xD Even the guys i talked with in a bar said, that for me it's better if i don't plan to permanently move to Germany... Germans are nice but most of them i met don't really like foreigners in their country. .
I was really expecting Putin to have a deep voice.
People often speak in a higher pitch in a foreign language, especially one they are not comfortable with. That's probable what happened there.
@@ChiaraBells exactly i can say yes because I'm in the same boat
Yes that was funny 🤣🤣🤣
I know, right? He almost sounded "delicate"...wierd!
His voice is indeed soft even if he speaks Russian, so any parody where he has a deep baritone like voice does not work well for the people that are used to hearing him for the last 20 years
Obama speaks a fair level of Swahili and Indonesian, a lot of leaders in African are pretty much bi lingual
German is my native language, although I've lived in Canada for 30 years now (15 in Germany). Schwarzenegger's German is perfect, from what I could hear. Yes, he has the typically heavy Austrian accent, but his German is solid. Kissinger's German was pretty good, but he's difficult to understand because he mumbles a bit.
What I've done to keep my German in excellent shape is to read German books and watch plenty of German shows and documentaries on RUclips and other channels. Plus, Netflix has a lot of great German shows, such as Dogs of Berlin.
As a German I have to disagree a little. Schwarzeneggers german ist still good and I couln't make out any major grammatical errors in these videos but he sounds like an american that learned austrian german. Kissingers german on the other hand was pretty bad imo. He made many major grammatical errors and his conjugation was almost always wrong. You can see him struggle to find words and then setteling for words that are barely good enough to still make sense. On top of that he mumbles so bad I really had a hard time to understand him.
I like how your name is Marty McFly also were's part 4
Das sehen eh nur Deutsche also warum nich auf Deutsch die die es nicht lesen können müssen sowieso nur die Untertitel aktivieren
Activate subtitle
\/
Why not speak german, there are only germans that will read this anyway, and if there is anyone that cant read it should just activate the subtitle
Haha. I do the exact opposite to keep my English in form I like to watch English RUclips video like this one and even stuff that is more complex. Just so that I don’t start to forget the language because I don’t speak it very often the last time was about 9 month ago. And only because I had English classes. Other then that I never come in the situation to actually speak it which tends to make me self aware when such a situation does occur and then I can start to have black outs wich is funny because I don’t have that problem when writing English.
@@DasSuperwalross as an austrian i can say he sounds exactly like a native austrian. Maybe the reason is because Austria has a lot of dialects
"Boris Johnson can speak French because he went to school in Belgium." -cuts to clip of Johnson speaking French and taking a minute to say like 4 words."
John Fahoum His pronunciation is actually pretty flawless, even if he didn’t speak much.
He talks like that in English
If you'd only spent some years of your childhood in Belgium I would expect you to speak everyday life French, not to be able to talk about political topics.
French native here.
His French is not perfect but it’s definitely quite good .
And I'm sure that a lot of people in Belgium also speak Dutch so I don't think that him staying in Belgium is a good excuse
Vladimir Putin speaking English is WEIRD
@@CallieMasters5000 ex-*
He can also speak German and has actually given a speech in the German parliament.
Sounds like a teen lol
His Russian is weird as well. He's not a good speaker.
Putin is a Lizardman!!!!
Came straight here after I heard Shinzō Abe had passed away. Rest In Peace Mr. Prime Minister
yeah, me too. It's sad
Yup. RIP, He was a good leader…😔
Nah. He was a nationalist who denied Japanese war crimes during WW2. Look up what the Japanese did in China and Korea, like the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731 and comfort women. (Not so "fun" fact, the acts of the Japanese were considered abhorrent even by the literal Nazis...)
Imagine Angela Merkel or Olaf Scholz denying the Holocaust. Shinzo Abe was nobody to feel sorry for. Good riddance tbh.
@@DaGum... Now I am very depressed in life! Please help!
Sweden has a higher percent of people fluent in English than Canada
I'm Canadian and I agree with this
Le Canada a un plus grand pourcentage de francophones que la Suède 🇫🇷
@@Allan_FTM On aimerait bien savoir si en tant que Canadien, tu connais le français...
@@francoislegallio4238 I don't know French very well
@@Allan_FTM Le parles-tu un peu ?
Schwarzenegger's german is perfect btw, in these videos he speaks like a native. This is how everyone sounds in the area in which he grew up.
Schwarzenegger's russian is like:
*K.O.K.A.I.N.U.M.*
@@Red_East хаха, NFKRZ
“Like a native”. He IS native. 😂
I don't agree. Ich glaub nicht. Er spricht Deutsch wie ein Americaner.
He's name is Like German's
Abe and Macron aren't bad at English, they just have very thick accents
I still think Merkel's pronunciation was somewhat better than Macron's in those clips even if she might otherwise be less good at English.
Well in other interviews, Macron can be quite hard to understand and he frequently makes mistakes. I wouldn't say he's good.
@@Jean-Poule_II He is good for a frenchman
@@sandi-224 I have some French friends that are much better than him... and some others that are much worse haha.
Sure, but it if it is too difficult to understand I think it's fair to say that even if they don't pause so much (which I probably wouldn't give them) then they aren't all-that capable of communicating in English, are they?
6:17 Dutch person here, we sometimes make fun of Mark Rutte for his Dutch accent here, but maybe the worldwide standards are lower than here
ALSO HOLLAND!?
@@robinthepresidentofdanzig2250I know he’s annoying that way
Martin van Buren, the 8th president of the USA, spoke Dutch as his first language. He is the only American president to this day to not speak English as a native language.
WOW
You have video when he speak on public with dutch?
@@bayuadrian1638 That was back in 1837, the film camera wasn't invented yet.
@@bayuadrian1638 Lmao dude it was the early 1800s
Y'all didn't get the joke 😂😂😂
We emigrated to Canada, Montreal, from Germany when I was 6 years old, in 1948. I spoke German at home, went to an English school and learned French on the streets. Quite easy when one is young.
YES!!!! Exactly why they teach languages at a young age
Sweet that you learned french and not only english
German is my favorite language. I am currently learning it.
Where I go to school in the US, they don't start teaching a second language until you're in 8th grade (so, basically when you're 13 or 14).
@@tbayspotting I always wonder why in the U.S. we don't start language learning until high school. It's ridiculous to start that late, it should start at the latest in first grade.
Boris Johnson is incomprehensible in any language.
He's french is about the level B2, I think. I had the impression he was searching for the right expression(s), if that's the correct phrase :) And I think he made a mistake in saying "incroyablement" instead of "incroyable".
😂
Rostislav Svoboda he speaks like that in English to be fair
Lol yess
well... I'm from Quebec, I understood his french, it was quite good actualy, and his english too... so maybe YOU are the one that can't understand lol
My favorite law school professor once said: “If you speak three or more languages, you’re called a polyglot. If you speak two languages, you’re called bilingual. And if you speak one language, you’re called an American.”
Lol
I have untold respect for anyone who can speak multiple languages. Even living in Canada, a bilingual country and taking many French classes in school hearing or seeing the language is like hitting a brick wall in terms of understanding. I'm astounded at the mastery of the English language that literally all these people have.
English is pretty easy considering the amount of media where you can find it (TV, series, webpages, tourists) whilst French is pretty much limited to France and half of QC. Since you don't get as much exposition, especially early in life, it's neigh impossible to just get familiar with it. Also french sucks as a language, way too complicated. I'm a french native tho so yay
@@TheSam1902 nah it´s beautiful
@@TheSam1902 I learned perfect Spanish when I was 20 😂 This is want not can’t
@@TheSam1902 I tried learning French, was lost at "Garçon". Beautiful language though
All of Europe after learning 4 different languages: bruh
I'm Finnish
I spoke English since 9
I can speak tolerable Swedish
I understand Spanish
I studied French in middle school
That sounds exceptional to some people, but you gotta speak Many languages here, everyone knows at least 3
🇩🇪 About the German:
• Arnold is from Styria, so his accent has always been very distinct and sadly he's mocked for that in itself, as well as his Americanized German. I tend to think he has no American drawl at all, but people like to play that up, if they imitate him. Saying "I'm the Governator!" is just too much fun.
His dubbed voice is very charming and suave standard German by the way. Unlike e.g. Christoph Waltz, who dubs himself, Arnold does not! His iconic GNAAARGH-I'llBeBack voice is definetly missing in the German versions of his movies. 😂
• Kissinger is quite bad at it. But no wonder. The guy's not been using it for decades. You can understand it, but his grammar and pronounciation are far off.
• Yes. Merkel's English is subpar and it's indeed because she grew up in the GDR. But apparently her Russian is fantastic, which is why other European leaders alledgedly like to leave dealing with Putin to her. ;)
• Oh and lastly: You showed and mentioned ex-Chancellor Schmidt in your video. He used to be very good at English, especially considering the time. He spoke at UK Labor party conferences and gave frequent interviews in English.
You mentioned Kissinger. In my opinion his German is actually not that bad. He's obviously not as good as a native speaker and he hasn't spoken it in a long time but I think his grammer is fine. But you are right if it comes to the pronunciation, though I think this might be a consequence of his age and the fact that he mumbles a bit.
theunsolvedcase My understanding is that in all Warsaw Pact countries before the fall of communism, all schools taught Russian as a second language. I dated a woman from Poland who told me this.
It was two Upper Austrians who taught me the phrase "Die bellen, die Steyer". Apparently, this is a widespread Austrian sentiment. As a native of California, I can say that our Governator exaggerated this accent (too good effect) in public, but does not have it nearly as much when speaking to small business groups. It is a a personal brand, exotic in English but just plain provincial in German.
Merkel supposedly learned English from reading the British Communist periodical "Morning Star".
Günter Oettinger Stoll speaks the best English!
6:10 “Some small obscure european countries”
Proceeds to mention Netherlands, Sweden and Norway.
Not to be an ass, but in terms of world wide influence, Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands are not as influential. The Netherlands were run by other countries for hundreds of years, and their language is not even popular in Europe. Scandinavian countries, despite their integration through conquest of other European countries, are not that influential culturally and linguistically these days, besides socialism.
@@APPLEcrispBISH There are several things wrong with your comment.
- Sweden and the Netherlands’ soft global power is often overlooked. According to the 2020 International Monetary Funds estimates, the Netherlands has the eleventh highest GDP per capita on the globe, whilst Sweden comes in at rank sixteen. Both nations are leaders in education and science, and citizens from Sweden, Norway and the Nerherlands tend to be happier than their Anglophone equivalents. Norway and the Netherlands are members of the European Union, and hold major sway within that organization, thus projecting their strength onto the global stage via the EU.
- The Netherlands are fiercely independent, and have mostly been as such for the last five hundred years, save for miniscule intervals during, say, the Napoleonic Wars or WW II.
- Scandinavian countries are not, nor were they ever, socialist. This is a lie, perpetuated by left-wing politicians in the US. Norway, Sweden and Denmark have Free Market systems with large amounts of welfare and social security. You could call these capitalist mations with high government spending social democratic or Keynesian, but the truth is that these methods were actually introduced by Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini first, followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt about ten years later. They have little to do with socialism or communism, which are economic systems that seek to end the free market, increase workers’ control over capital and create a classless society.
Yes but they are neither that small (in landmass anyway) nor obscure. I'm sure way more people know about those countries than about the actual small countries (Andorra, Monaco etc.) or more obscure ones like Moldova.
And no Danish
Maybe obscure to some but not me😜
Never hear Marco Rubio speaking Spanish before! He really keeps an strong Cuban accent! Great video! Regards from Mexico
I think you confused "fluent" and "with a good accent"
Macron does not hesitate at all when speaking English, and a has a large vocabulary along good grammar
It's just that he has a French accent : /
It's kind of like saying your American friend joking around and using a French accent is bad at English. Their English level didn't change, they're just using a different accent.
He's still a raging dickhead though.
And i even think he deliberately conserve a thick accent to emphasize his origin
@@eclate95 haw haw I am so Franch
i mean, pronouncing words correctly is a part of knowing a language so...
@@yuritardid7761 There is no correct pronunciation for English.