I'm waaaay behind on all the things, but here's a belated Wednesday post highlighting Putin's linguistic capabilities.
Putin speaks Russian, French (obviously), German, and English. Is there some other one I don't know about? Not surprised about the French because I swear every Russian book I've read uses French phrases (even after translation) and Russia's power was during the height of French's fashionability. It's not uncommon for anyone in Europe or Russia to know French in some capacity.
It only makes sense that he speaks German since Putin was stationed as a KGB officer in Dresden for 5 years. I cannot help but think of Lara in Good Bye, Lenin! because the accent is the exact same.
Then there's English. This is the video that came out with him speaking English. He obviously has used English before (doubt that Obama speaks any of the other three languages), but everyone is making note of this video. I certainly did because I've never seen video of him using English, let alone for such a span of time. Does anyone else notice that he makes weird facial contortions with certain English sounds? It looks like it pains him to utter them out loud. I worked with an Italian woman in Budapest who would always repeat the hideous "er" sound whenever she uttered it, just to make fun of how ugly it sounded. We often would just start saying "er! er! ERRRRR!" to be funny because, let's face it, it really is a hideous sound.
No videos of French, and why would I even care! France isn't part of this blog!
Contemporary Discussion of Eastern Europe In All Its Glory
