Listen to world leaders speak English!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ส.ค. 2024
- What do Putin, Merkel, Macron, and the popes sound like when they speak English? Can Xi speak English? What about Bolsonaro? What world leader speaks the best English of all? And did you know Boris can speak French? All will be revealed in this linguistic tour of presidents and prime ministers speaking second languages.
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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.
@@iMonsieurAnthony I was going to say exactly the same!
@@iMonsieurAnthony 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
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.
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😅
Putin speaking English is the weirdest thing I watched on TH-cam. 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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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: 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.
fun fact: stalin spoke english with an irish accent since he was taught by an irishman
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
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: Every Pope has to speak Italian, even the ones from non-Italian backgrounds.
Well, yes. The Vatican government uses the Italian language to run everything. You don't want those wily cardinals and Vatican curia insiders to take advantage of you so you, as Pope, need to be able to read everything they write.
@@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.
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 🥺"
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?
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
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
pretty weird seeing that clip of Abe knowing he was shot dead just 5 years later (the clip is from February 2017)
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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
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 love the fact that Arnold momentarily broke from German to say "I'll be back"!
R.I.P. Shinzo Abe
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?
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?
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
Obama speaks a fair level of Swahili and Indonesian, a lot of leaders in African are pretty much bi lingual
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.
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
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.
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 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
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
J.J refusing to call the Netherlands by it's actual name while repeatedly showing it on screen is a true power move
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
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
@@coby4480 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?
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.
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
RIP Mr. Shinzo Abe.
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!
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)
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!
Late to the game, but my example would be Ilhan Omar, representative for Minnesota in Congress. She’s a Somali refugee, speaks English really well, and is a great politician for my region.
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
well...
RIP Shinzo Abe now :(
Cyril Ramaphosa, The president of South Africa knows most of South Africa's 11 official languages.
His native language is TshiVenda but he speaks English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa fluently which is all he really needs.
He learned many of these languages from being a big time businessman and negotiator for the ANC at the end of Apartheid.
He often flexes this when he flips through 8 langauges in one speech.
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 😋😂
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 th-cam.com/video/cejoFCVzCs0/w-d-xo.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
the irish president: hold my guinness *speaks the best english*
Former german vice chancellor Guido Westerwelle was so bad at english that he vehemently opposed to speaking the language when asked to do so. Of course he was relentlessly mocked about it by the german public. Also I don't think Merkels english is particularly bad, it's just very german, which is an accent that's very hard to get rid of.
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.
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!!!!
Putin speaking in English looks like a deep fake of Putin speaking in English lol
6:41 I think the reason why people in the Netherlands and in Scandinavian countries have higher English fluency than most other non-English-speaking countries is because they're all in the Germanic language family, so they share a lot of root words and stuff. It's like how it's easier to learn Spanish if you already know French or Italian. Dutch in particular is one of English's closest linguistic relatives, and many English-speakers visiting the Netherlands have remarked that Dutch and English are so similar that Dutch phrases fall into a sort of "English uncanny valley" when English-speakers read them.
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
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
Off-topic: As much as I benefited from being a bilingual person in my life, I still think people in English speaking countries are kind of lucky. You guys can choose to learn a 2nd language because you actually enjoy doing so, not because you need it for survival or to study abroad. You don't have to go through the awkwardness of mispronouncing words or not being understood because of your accent. Regarding presidents and prime ministers, they usually come from privileged wealthy families, which allows them to afford the ridiculously costly higher education of English speaking nations.
Never hear Marco Rubio speaking Spanish before! He really keeps an strong Cuban accent! Great video! Regards from Mexico
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
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
There is something about German... Lots of my family moved to the states after the war and my great grandmother got to a point where she "claimed" she couldn't even remember it anymore.. They really wanted to be removed from it really, but my grandfathers was also a bit rusty...some things you just couldn't understand when he talked in it. Although, at the end of the war they claimed it was just easier to learn English as it basically became a sort of survival skill for them all.
Why does this guy has the strongest Canadian accent I’ve ever heard
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?
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
Haha, Putin's English's voice killed me 😂😂😂
RIP Former PM Shinzo Abe! 🇯🇵
Now I am very depressed in life! Please help! 😔😭🥺
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.
Don't diss the Pope's English, they're all fluent in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, and whatever their native language is.
Don’t forget the current pope (Francis) was born in Argentina so he probably speaks Spanish
yeesh, talk about skill
Read somewhere Francis also speaks fluent german, not sure wether it’s true.
Not to mention historically English speaking countries haven't had the best track record with Catholicism except for Ireland, and even they're moving back (slowly) to Gaelic
@@TsunamiJuri what does that have to do with the pope speaking several languages?
5:41 But you must remember that English is the main official language of Singapore, and they are known for their English language education
0:15 Photographer wasn't saying "私を見てください", that's a double translation from the english "look at me". Originally they were saying "こちらお願いします", which more closely translates to "Please give attention to us as well"
“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
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...
President Xi speaks English.
You can very clearly hear him say 'Wassup Beijing!"
I went to Croatia on vacation and I never had a single instance where a native there couldn't speak English
Same when I was in Sweden. My Swedish friend told me that asking someone if they can speak English was akin to asking them if they can read.
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.
"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
I love being able to speak Afrikaans. And because it's not widely spoken, you can diss rude, annoying people and swear at them when you travel internationally 😂😅
Despite that our government officials suck at English, the Swiss are generally bilingual if not trilingual. This is because we have 4 official languages (German, French, Italian and Reto-Romansh), meaning that we all learned 2-3 foreign languages at school at all times, from preschool all the way up to high school. I, for example lived in the German region, where we speak High-German and Swiss-German (yes, they're very different) and also learned English, French and Italian as well as a bit of Latin in high school.
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"))
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._
Vaclav Havel when addressing congress did exactly what Merkel did, apologizing and switching to Czech.
My ex girlfriend's first language was Korean and lived there until 10 years old, but her speaking skills have diminished to a very childish vocabulary, but with fluent grammar and accent. She dreams exclusively in Korean and talked in her sleep all the time, despite thinking exclusively in English.
Her dad is American and she's spent almost all of her life in America or on American military bases, having spent the first half of her childhood in Seoul, and her mom speaks to her only in Korean, and we live in an area with a large Korean community.
I'm sure one will see this, but, Ive always found this fascinating
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. .
Boris Johnson’s French is a lot worse than Merkels English.
Boris doesn't speak that good English either
Agreed - he is not fluent
You guys have a high standard th-cam.com/video/9OzSvvuCgJ4/w-d-xo.html I think he is killing it
@@haas1776 As I said: no better than Merkels English. In this video his French is acceptable, but if he were to visit Belgium again we would prefer for him to speak English so the conversation would be more fluent.
We see a class photo of Boris at the European School in Brussels. I was a student at the same school and everyone in that school was really fluent in French. I even remember a television crew that came to interview teachers and students alike and film us during our language classes, as we were an example of bilingualism or trilingualism that was not so common at the time. I attended that school shortly after him, in the 80's. This is why I am surprised that he is not that fluent in French and that his pronunciation, although not bad, is far from perfect.
I forgot how our president of Croatia, Kolinda, is so good at english. Wish we stil had her cause atleast she did some good stuff other then fight like our current president
Get ready to see leaders speaking Chinese within 10 years.
Is it me or is this Guy bouncing on his chair the whole time
Joris M he is bouncing on his chair the whole time
Pink poo Poo and that’s super annoying
He sits on a medicine ball
It is you, there was a earthquake at your location right as you watched the video
Same thing seen !!
Xi was a foreign exchange student who came to America as a teenager so he must know how to speak English to some degree, he probably just chooses to not speak it on purpose for his image.
@@sewpungyow5154 can you link it?
@@sewpungyow5154 ah, no problem
@@sewpungyow5154 putonhuan is mandarin
The ex-ex-president Jiangzemin can speak eight foreign languages and at least three dialects of Chinese.
I bet he speaks English like a California Valley Girl. Like Oh my God.
The most interesting accent with language was the Japanese embassador in Lebanon. Such a cool combination imo. He speaks Arabic, but you can hear the Japanese influence
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