{"id":846,"date":"2015-07-21T16:49:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T14:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/?p=846"},"modified":"2015-07-21T16:49:29","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T14:49:29","slug":"politicians-struggling-with-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/politicians-struggling-with-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Politicians Struggling With English"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As English becomes ever more established as the world&#8217;s lingua franca, more and more people have to perform\u00a0parts of their jobs in English. This may be true for you. It&#8217;s certainly true for high-ranking politicians. And sometimes they struggle.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There is a long history of politicians inflicting their less-than-perfect English on the world, from\u00a0Heinrich L\u00fcbke&#8217;s words \u2013 &#8222;Equal goes it loose&#8220; \u2013 to the Queen while awaiting the start of a military tattoo (<a href=\"https:\/\/de.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Heinrich_L%C3%BCbke#Bundespr.C3.A4sident\">although this may not be a true story<\/a>) to the incomprehensible speech by current Italian prime minister in the video below:<\/p>\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  id=\"_ytid_90976\"  width=\"604\" height=\"340\"  data-origwidth=\"604\" data-origheight=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B0KJZEH2jn8?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;disablekb=0&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But the fact that politicians who speak English as a second (or third, or fourth&#8230;) language have some problems with it shouldn&#8217;t surprise anyone. What&#8217;s really shocking is what comes out of the mouths of native\u00a0English-speaking politicians.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Some\u00a0US politicians really stand out in this regard. Enough has been said about George W. Bush in recent years, but let&#8217;s take a moment to remember Dan Quayle, vice president to Bush the elder. Quayle\u00a0was famous for his\u00a0almost poetically confusing statements. For example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8222;Votes are like trees, if you are trying to build a forest. If you have more trees than you have forests, then at that point the pollsters will probably say you will win.&#8220;<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8222;If you give a person a fish, they&#8217;ll fish for a day. But if you train a person to fish, they&#8217;ll fish for a lifetime.&#8220;<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8222;This isn&#8217;t a man who is leaving with his head between his legs.&#8220;<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8222;The future will be better tomorrow.&#8220;<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8222;We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.&#8220;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He also struggled a little with spelling, and wanted to make sure that the children of America would suffer the same fate:<\/p>\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  id=\"_ytid_75386\"  width=\"604\" height=\"453\"  data-origwidth=\"604\" data-origheight=\"453\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Wdqbi66oNuI?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;disablekb=0&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As English becomes ever more established as the world&#8217;s lingua franca, more and more people have to perform\u00a0parts of their jobs in English. This may be true for you. It&#8217;s certainly true for high-ranking politicians. And sometimes they struggle. There is a long history of politicians inflicting their less-than-perfect English on the world, from\u00a0Heinrich L\u00fcbke&#8217;s [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[22,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":848,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}