The Anonymous Widower

Only In The United States Could Speaking French be a Disadvantage

According to this account on the BBC’s web site, Mitt Romney is being denounced for being able to speak French and actually doing it in public.

I think we have a rather different attitude in Europe, as although we argue with the French many of our politicians have used French when talking publicly in France. Although, we do make a joke of it between us. As two old friends would.  Apparently, the French version of Allo Allo deliberately used bad French as a joke, even more than the English version did with Officer Crabtree being a deliberate parody of Edward Heath.

Remember too, the Queen speaks reasonable French, as this article attests.

We now live in a world, where many more people are bilingual, as their parents were immigrants. So the US has a large proportion of Spanish speakers and we have quite a lot of speakers of many other languages.

But go back to 1900 and has anything changed.  Yiddish and German would have been heard in many places in London and New York for a start.

But now, only in America would the ability to speak a foreign language be considered to be a handicap for a politician!

January 14, 2012 - Posted by AnonW | News | France, Language, Mitt Romney, Queen Elizabeth, United States