Mayor Pete's multilingualism

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Sure, you may have heard that Pete Buttigieg, now on the presidential campaign trail, can speak a surprising number of languages. Now the Washington Post compiles the evidence in one video, under the appropriate headline, "Mayor Pete speaks a lot of languages, even when he's not fluent." In the video, Polyglot Pete shows off his varying skills in French, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Farsi (aka Iranian Persian), Dari (aka Afghan Persian), and Norwegian. Oddly, there's no footage of him speaking Maltese, which is likely the foreign language in which he has the most fluency, given that his father is from Malta.

Further reading on the foreign-language abilities of recent presidents and presidential candidates:

(Hat tip, Larry Selinker.)



16 Comments

  1. Moonfriend said,

    April 18, 2019 @ 7:56 pm

    This is impressive for a USian. In contrast, Trump can barely speak one language.

    However, there is no evidence here (or in my quick web search) that he can speak Persian, and in the clips of his Farsi and Dari he's using the same basic phrase. And he mispronounces 'Dari'.

  2. Gwen Katz said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 12:48 am

    This thread and the Gillibrand thread will provide a fascinating side-by-side on how people react to male and female candidates demonstrating similar skills.

  3. Philip Taylor said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 3:30 am

    [OT] Ben, the e-mails from language log now contain "Read more" hyperlinks using secure HTTP (e.g., https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42490#more-42490) with the link text "Read more of this post". The present LL server does not appear to support secure HTTP, so the links are dysfunctional. Already reported in a previous thread but the problem remains. Are you in a position to ask someone to investigate ? The first post to manifest this problem was Victor Mair's No scanner dated 13/04/2019 16:28; all previous e-mails contain an insecure link for "Read more …". The timing of this change co-incides perfectly with Mark's announcement "System transition starting at 3:00 today", dated 12/04/2019 17:45.

  4. Philip Spaelti said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 5:23 am

    The fact that his father is from Malta in no way implies that it is "the foreign language in which he has the most fluency".

  5. cliff arroyo said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 8:20 am

    "his father is from Malta in no way implies that it is "the foreign language in which he has the most fluency""

    Why not? It's not a language that many learn as adults and he might well have had prolonged childhood exposure…

  6. Chuck said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 9:51 am

    I see only "This content is currently not available in your region" in the video frame. However, the same WaPo video is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxtvXaRe2lg

  7. Andrew said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 10:52 am

    Test comment to observer strange link behavior.

  8. LDC Systems said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 10:54 am

    test comment logged in account.

  9. Michael Becker said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 11:33 am

    Indeed, impressive for an American. His vocabulary, morphology, and pronunciation are not particularly good in any of these languages.

  10. J.W. Brewer said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 12:22 pm

    Like many Maltese, Mr. Buttigieg's late father likely grew up at least trilingual. He had all of his higher education, variously in Malta, the UK, and the US, at universities where the language of instruction is English, and as an American academic translated various works by Gramsci from Italian (Malta's third most common language) into English. Given that his wife was not of Maltese background there is no particular reason to believe he would have spoken Maltese around the house while his son was growing up or tried to teach his son even the rudiments of the language, especially when you consider that grandparents, cousins, etc. back in the Old Country would be likely to be reasonably fluent in English as well as Maltese. Obviously, if the late Prof Buttigieg were an enthusiast for less-widely-known languages like the average LL reader is, he would have done so, but most human beings just aren't like that. It also seems pretty obvious that Maltese with a higher-than-average degree of attachment to the Maltese language are by and large going to tend to stay in Malta rather than leave it behind and emigrate to some place with greater resume value in the eyes of the wider world.

  11. J.W. Brewer said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 3:30 pm

    Here's further coverage of the candidate's multilingualism in non-Maltese languages, FWIW: https://politics.theonion.com/pete-buttigieg-stuns-campaign-crowd-by-speaking-to-manu-1834117054

  12. Levantine said,

    April 19, 2019 @ 6:27 pm

    Impressive indeed, but I feel it's a bit of a cheat to list Farsi and Dari separately when they are both mutually intelligible varieties of one and the same language: Persian.

  13. KB said,

    April 20, 2019 @ 7:42 pm

    > It also seems pretty obvious that Maltese with a higher-than-average degree of attachment to the Maltese language are by and large going to tend to stay in Malta rather than leave it behind and emigrate to some place with greater resume value in the eyes of the wider world.

    Nonsense.

  14. dainichi said,

    April 23, 2019 @ 2:53 am

    > there is no particular reason to believe he would have spoken Maltese around the house while his son was growing up

    other than it being his native language (I assume)… In fact, I've heard that's a reason for lots of people to speak a language.

    > if the late Prof Buttigieg were an enthusiast for less-widely-known languages like the average LL reader is, he would have done so, but most human beings just aren't like that.

    Well, he did marry a linguist…

  15. J.W. Brewer said,

    April 25, 2019 @ 10:40 am

    FWIW this piece adds Maltese to the mix of languages while not listing Farsi separately from Dari. But it also hedges with "reportedly," so audio/video evidence of him speaking Maltese sufficient to allow others to evaluate his degree of exepertise may still remain to be located.

    https://theweek.com/speedreads/833175/octolingual-pete-buttigieg-just-proved-speak-italian-news-conference

  16. Kanarthi said,

    April 25, 2019 @ 11:56 am

    Mmm, I would be skeptical about Maltese fluency. My experience with the Greek-American community indicates that fluency levels track very closely to whether the mother was Greek or not, completely independent of the father's heritage. Extrapolating this observation to Malta, someone with a Maltese father is much more likely to have learned some basic greetings or "table talk" but is not especially likely to be fluent.

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