Will we ever see a Unilingual Prime Minster in Canada?

[Harry Lime]

I've tried on several occasions to learn Spanish. I don't have a learning disability (that I know of), but for whatever reason I simply can not reconstruct what I want to say into a second language. I went to Mexico, and did my best, but all that happened was the creation of a lot of confused looks.

If I were a savant who could balance the books for the nation, provinces and municipalities during a free weekend, but I'd never run for office because I don't have it in me to speak French.

The message is that content is not important. If we had the best statesman, governor and politician the world had ever seen as PM. Every decision a stroke of genius. But only spoke Esperanto... I'd get over it.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

I've tried on several occasions to learn Spanish. I don't have a learning disability (that I know of), but for whatever reason I simply can not reconstruct what I want to say into a second language. I went to Mexico, and did my best, but all that happened was the creation of a lot of confused looks.

If I were a savant who could balance the books for the nation, provinces and municipalities during a free weekend, but I'd never run for office because I don't have it in me to speak French.

The message is that content is not important. If we had the best statesman, governor and politician the world had ever seen as PM. Every decision a stroke of genius. But only spoke Esperanto... I'd get over it.

As someone who learned a foreign language as an adult, I will say it is pretty difficult if you can't completely immerse yourself. I find one of the more difficult things about learning another language as an English speaker is being able to immerse yourself because English is such a popular language globally. People just tend to have little patience to put up with someone struggling in their native language if they don't need to. Most people would hear my English accent and just switch to English when talking to me. Forcing someone to struggle and work through it is important.

There is a hump that is almost impossible to get over if you can't put yourself in a "do, or die" situation of not only needing to speak the language, but needing to think in the language too. I learned more in 2 weeks in a living situation where no one spoke English than I did from studying and practicing for a year or two before that.

I put my kid in French immersion because I want her to have that advantage. Young brains are just way better at picking up languages. Although even French immersion isn't a guarantee. My nieces both went to the same French immersion school and one of them is fluent and the other lost it pretty quick after graduating and not needing for anything. Some people just seem to be better at it, sadly I am not one of those people.

[GreenLantern2814]

No, and we shouldn’t.

Canada has two official languages. If you want to lead this country, learn both of them.

I wouldn’t want a PM who couldn’t speak to Quebec in French any more than I’d want a PM incapable of addressing the nation in English.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

Does Trudeau speak a third language? Does Biden speak even two? Trump can barely speak one. I feel like that requirement is more something we see in Europe.

It's obviously not a requirement, just something most leaders learn because a) it's extremely useful b) they tend to be of the smart and educated sort.

I did list Putin there, and Xi Jinping if you noticed. India's PM also speaks three languages (two local + English, although he's bad at it for an Indian upper class person).

Bolsonoro obviously is a dufus (or pretends to be one) who speaks only Portuguese, but the previous president of Brazil spoke I believe English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic.

Turkey's Erdogan speaks at least Turkish, Arabic and English (although his English isn't great).

Kim Jong-un speaks at least German (with a Swiss accent), English and probably French on top of Korean.

The South Korean president in contrast doesn't even speak English, something that quite obviously comes up in international meetings, so it's not like that's unheard of. Can you get away with just English? Absolutely. and if you're fluent in English and French you're very well off.

There's also lot of local variety to what extent international relationships are the head of states job, and it often varies depends what are the major global issues at the time and what things are on the ruling parties agenda.

So I'm not making any definitive statement about the issue, I'm not a Canadian, your languages are your business. I'm just pointing out the fact that heads of state very typically speak multiple languages, and in my personal opinion I would call a unilingual person underqualified. (Plus there's a lot of upper class people in the world who think people who don't speak foreign languages are basically barbarians.)

I would guess three spoken languages is about the average for a head of state.

The current Finnish president speaks I think five languages and the PM speaks three to four (her German isn't great). Smaller countries tend to have work harder :P