For anyone interested in how good the Spanish of those politicians is: - Marco Rubio is clearly the best one, I wouldn’t differentiate between him and other speaker with that accent (cuban?) - Buttigieg is good in terms of pronunciation but he struggles to find the words - Beto is the contrary his pronunciation is way worse but he speaks more fluently - Booker’s is terrible and you can barely understand.

Putin speaking English is the weirdest thing I watched on KZfaq. He became a whole different person when he opened his mouth.

As a European , i think it is weird when someone can speak only one language.

I had a classmate once who thought in Japanese 100% of the time, and while speak English (her fourth language) she was translating from Japanese to Spanish and then from Spanish to English. This was because she learned English, from Spanish speaking teachers, who did not speak Japanese. Holding a conversation with someone who is thinking in Japanese, but speaking with a really thick Mexican accent, while being clearly ethnically Samoan is a good way to be reminded that the world is a wondrously varied place. She told that she thinks American English speakers have a weird linguistic superpower that we don't know we have. She observed that we are able to freely make up and understand slang, on the spot, and extremely fluidly. She said that it's part of the reason it can be difficult to learn English, in America. She gave me examples which made sense to me, but after she explained how terrible they translated into either Spanish _or_ Japanese, I started to see what she was saying. She actually thought it was really interesting. The way some of us freely use nouns as verbs or the way we can make sense of statements like, "The whole world markets together, because first the Mongols, then Napolean." suggests that our linguistic centers are always awake. She said couldn't decide if thought we should all have an easier time becoming bilingual than we realize, or if it's the reason we struggle to.

this guy wasn't a politician but he could still speak English, French, German and I do believe he could also speak Russian, Swedish, Greek, Spanish and Italian. his name was Sir Christopher Lee and he was a native English speaker.

Fun Fact: Putin speaks perfect german Merkel speaks perfect russian

Putin in Russian: *gargles asphalt while wrestling a bear* Putin in English: *High Welcome to Chilli’s*

As someone who speaks both fluent English and Chinese, I say that it's pretty impressive that Kevin Rudd can speak Chinese so well.

When it comes to Scandinavia, for example, it is no wonder that they find it easy to learn English. The languages are closely related. Finland, on the other hand, has made a fantastic journey in terms of learning languages. Those who understand how different Finnish is from other languages understand.

fun fact: Schwarzenegger wasn't allowed to do the German dub for "Terminator" because his accent was considered too rural. It'd be like if a Hillbilly voiced Wall - E or something.

I can speak English, American, British, Australian, and Canadian

Lee Hsien Loong, the Pm of Singapore, is actually a Native English speaker. You will be surprised to learn how many "Native" English speakers there are in Singapore. The problem is that we tend to mix different words, and sometimes even switch languages mid-way speaking. This is why most Singaporeans are bilingual, and basically have two native languages, depending on their ethnicity.

The Schwarzenegger and Kissinger thing is really interesting. I can't imagine, as an English speaker, forgetting how to speak English. It's so entrenched.

The funny thing about Arnold is that his accent is arguably more noticeable when he speaks German. In English, he just has "a German accent". In German, he has a truly overwhelmingly powerful South German/Austrian accent.

Boris johnson sounds like he's trying to explain to his teacher why he's late to class

Honestly I love hearing the different accents people have when speaking english and I find it interesting how depending on how and where you learn english you cant end up adopting that place or person's accent.

pretty weird seeing that clip of Abe knowing he was shot dead just 5 years later (the clip is from February 2017)

For anyone learning English: please know that the vast majority of us native speakers don't care that you have an accent like the people in this video. I love hearing different accents, and i think most can agree with me!

That Putin clip was kinda freaky, his mouth moves really weird almost like a deep fake

east germans were taught russian as their second language in place of west german english during germany’s occupation when i did a student exchange in germany one of my friends was placed with a family from east germany and it meant he could only really communicate with their children as they learned russian as children

As a Swede (one of the top three countries with the highest level of English fluency) I can tell you that I even dream in English many times. Daily I think about a word in English but where I can't come up with the corresponding word in Swedish. Damn it 😄

The popes aren’t that great at English because international communication within the Church is done in Latin, so they are more proficient at that language.

If someone doesn't have a good accent in any language, that doesn't mean that they aren't good or even almost fluent in that language. Accents and fluency in a language are two very different things.

BootyJudge isn't so much struggling to speak Spanish, but you can see him translating in his head. Rubio is so fluent you can tell he grew up arguing in Spanish and English. It's a beautiful thing.

I'm eternally jealous of people who can speak multiple languages so well. I'm American and I took spanish classes for 12 years in school, but without any practical application of the language outside of the classroom (along with a generally poor aptitude for foreign languages on my part) I could never get beyond the most basic of sentences. And now that it's been 5-6 years since my last spanish class, I couldn't even begin to humor a conversation in the language.

13:37 People might think Boris' French isn't great, but he speaks like that in English as well.

i love how boris stutters like he does in english

I love the fact that Arnold momentarily broke from German to say "I'll be back"!

fun fact: stalin spoke english with an irish accent since he was taught by an irishman

Putin's mouth movement when he talks in English looks like when Mr. Bean talks.

Putin sounds so goofy speaking English, I expected him to have this deep menacing voice and we have that of a puberty ridden teenager with severe social anxiety.

He might not be a politician, but I find Roald Dahl's (a famous children's book writer) linguistic skills quite fascinating as a Norwegian. Dahl was born in the UK to immigrants from Norway, and Norwegian was his first language. He did an interview for the NRK in 1989, and I can tell that his Norwegian is very rusty; probably, he has spent so much of his life in Britain that his native language has weakened over time, much like with Kissinger and his German.

As an English speaker who learned spanish later in life i can say that i have alot of empathy for people who speak with strong accents in their second language. For whatever reason some people physically have struggles no matter how fluent they get

As a nativ German speaker I could say that Arnold is still very good in German there is no American accent there is only his Austrian accent

Fun fact: Every Pope has to speak Italian, even the ones from non-Italian backgrounds.

My favorite law school professor once said: “If you speak three or more languages, you’re called a polyglot. If you speak two languages, you’re called bilingual. And if you speak one language, you’re called an American.”

6:20 As someone from the Netherlands, it's interesting to hear you point to Rutte as an example for someone who's quite good at English, given that his strong Dutch accent when speaking English is regularly poked fun at in our own media.

Putin looks like he's lip-syncing to his own voice over with a Chinese accent in a Hong Kong Kung Fu flick.

I know this video is old, but I think Abe Shinzo speaks fluent English. He even studied in the US for a year and a half. If you listen to his speeches in Japanese, he delivers them in the same weird, halting manner. That's just how he speaks. Like a weirdo.

Came straight here after I heard Shinzō Abe had passed away. Rest In Peace Mr. Prime Minister

I loved Merkel ngl she seems so sweet like "I'm so sorry I cannot speak English so well so I'll speak German. Pls forgive me 🥺"

On the defense of the Pope, he does speak a lot more languages than the average person. Argentine Spanish, Italian, German, French and Portuguese are among the languages he is comfortable speaking.

Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks a perfect German with a strong austrian accent.

R.I.P. Shinzo Abe

Kissinger's German is so interesting. I think it kinda got stuck at the young age when he moved to America and while the German language as a whole developed from then, his German stayed the same. In particular, he is using a lot of "Präteritum" tense which isn't really a thing we often do anymore in spoken language. It also makes me think he might be from northern Germany since that's more prevalent there and he is speaking in a pretty standard accent, not a dialect.

I was working in Munich Germany about 20 years ago. An American couple asked me for directions. After helping them out they walked on and I heard one of them tell the other "wow her English is really good". Being English, I would hope my mother tongue was up to par lol

also, accent has nothing to do with fluency, you can have a very strong accent and have strong academic level knowledge of the language

I went to Croatia on vacation and I never had a single instance where a native there couldn't speak English

this is such a good one!

As a German native speaker I can tell you: Even though Schwarzenegger speaks in a dialect, his German is much more convincing than Kissinger's German is.

I absolutely loved this video. Thanks for all of the knowledge ☺️

Obama speaks a fair level of Swahili and Indonesian, a lot of leaders in African are pretty much bi lingual

Singapore's official language is English. So there's nothing surprising about the prime minister being so good at it.

I cannot imagine a more German name than Helmut Schmidt.

Omg I love this Chanel so much. Thank you!!!

Loved this video JJ, great work, thank you :) x

On the German speaking politicians: - Arnold Schwarzenegger comes from a very rural area in Austria, and so his pronunciation is, by default, unique. However the only thing that is different is that his dialect is becoming less and less audible. other than that his grammar is perfectly good. - Kissinger seems to speak a little less fluently than a native, but his accent is much more standard. in conclusion, one is probably self-conscious about his accent, the other about his fluency, but hopefully this shows why they might be so reluctant to speak German (btw I speak German)

As a German, I was happy that Merkel was mentioned She’s always polite when she apologises for her “not good English” I actually think hers is perfectly fine because German pronunciation is so different

Good work.

Vaclav Havel when addressing congress did exactly what Merkel did, apologizing and switching to Czech.

8:08 in East Germany, people didn't learn English, they have learned Russian.

Schwarzenegger isnt that bad at german, he just speaks austrian german, that sometimes sounds very different

well... RIP Shinzo Abe now :(

Why does this guy has the strongest Canadian accent I’ve ever heard

Macron: "...ze twenty-first century *hath* brought..." Who knew, he speaks Shakespearean English!

Macron’s English is perfectly fine, he just has a strong French accent.

Interesting stuff. Good research.

This is one of your best videos

Schwarzenegger's German is pretty good actually. He's got a strong Styrian accent so I can see why it would sound strange to folks from Germany, but he seems fluent enough in that one clip. Kissinger did pretty alright too; quite remarkable if you take into account the fact that he fled Germany more than 80 years ago, at age 15. His reluctance to speak the language may stem from the historical connotations he associates it with.

"I will Polish my English" - Donald Tusk, former President of the European Council and Prime Minister of Poland

Rest in peace, Shinzo Abe. You will be missed.

6:17 Dutch person here, we sometimes make fun of Mark Rutte for his Dutch accent here, but maybe the worldwide standards are lower than here

Here in South Korea every single president from 1948 until 2003 spoke 100% fluent Japanese because all of them where educated during the Japanese occupation period. President Park Jung Hee who ruled South Korea from 1960 to 1979 was even a graduate from imperial Japanese military academy. But what is interesting is that all of those presidents even including president Park refused speaking Japanese when having summit talks with Japanese prime ministers. They would always have their personal translators with them even though they understood Japanese 100%. It was obviously because they wanted to be shown as a nationalistic and patriotic figure. But when they retired they were often given interviews with Japanese medias and people were surprised at how well they kept their Japanese skills even after all those years.

Poor Vladimir has shape-shifted when he started talking in English. I thought something horrible had happened to him

RIP Mr. Shinzo Abe.

Late to the game, but my example would be Ilhan Omar, representative for Minnesota in Congress. She’s a Somali refugee, speaks English really well, and is a great politician for my region.

Putin's face when he's speaking English is just hilarious.

I literally shot milk out of my nose after hearing Putin speak English. The sort of laugh I wish I caught on camera.

My aunt grew up in East Germany as well and she does this a lot, they speak English in the house a lot but whenever they visit she always apologizes even though we understand her fine.

Former german vice chancellor Guido Westerwelle was so bad at english that he vehemently opposed to speaking the language when asked to do so. Of course he was relentlessly mocked about it by the german public. Also I don't think Merkels english is particularly bad, it's just very german, which is an accent that's very hard to get rid of.

Arnold's German: A++ Kissinger's German: B-/C Thats all I have to say. Kissinger has forgotten his German, where as Arnold, thanks to his accent, has retained it and is almost indistinguishable from a Steiermark native speaker, as if he never left.

Kissinger's accent is kind if intelligible, he sounds like that grandpa who settled in the US and became too American. Arnold's accent sounds perfectly fine, but with an Austrian accent tho Just wanted to mention, Boris' french is not that good lol

Never hear Marco Rubio speaking Spanish before! He really keeps an strong Cuban accent! Great video! Regards from Mexico

This is one of your best videos jj

"Boris Johnson is fluent in French" Meanwhile BoJo speaking French: *Speaks maybe one sentence and says "uhm uh" fifty times*

“Boris Johnson can speak French...” Proceeds to show a video of him stumbling as much as I did in my high school French class

Love the jersey my man

I forgot how our president of Croatia, Kolinda, is so good at english. Wish we stil had her cause atleast she did some good stuff other then fight like our current president

“Sorry Latin, you had a good run!” “French, A for effort” Esperanto: “I really didn’t have a chance, did I?”

Xi was a foreign exchange student who came to America as a teenager so he must know how to speak English to some degree, he probably just chooses to not speak it on purpose for his image.

J.J refusing to call the Netherlands by it's actual name while repeatedly showing it on screen is a true power move

0:15 Photographer wasn't saying "私を見てください", that's a double translation from the english "look at me". Originally they were saying "こちらお願いします", which more closely translates to "Please give attention to us as well"

In east germany, you could choose between learning russian or english in school, but if you chose english you would get...the loooks

Vladimir Putin speaking English is WEIRD

The most interesting accent with language was the Japanese embassador in Lebanon. Such a cool combination imo. He speaks Arabic, but you can hear the Japanese influence

As other commenters have mentioned, the language you think/dream in is usually dominant, and I'd guess Kissenger and Arnold both think in English now. I very briefly got to a point where I was thinking in another language, it's an amazing experience.

I am trying to picture Putin's voice with the image of him topless riding a horse and they just don't jive.

Merkel: *speaks English perfectly fine* Merkel: "I'm sorry, I'm not very good at this." Awww. :C I hope someone can give her a confidence boost. Yes, she speaks with an accent, but it's still fairly decent English. She's definitely better than Macron, and he was completely intelligible even with his off pronunciations. Also, while Putin projects this idea that he speaks Russian on the global stage to show Russian equality to the Anglosphere, I suspect it's also partially because his voice goes up half an octave when he speaks English. He just sounds better in Russian, and that's important for a leader too.

Off-topic: As much as I benefited from being a bilingual person in my life, I still think people in English speaking countries are kind of lucky. You guys can choose to learn a 2nd language because you actually enjoy doing so, not because you need it for survival or to study abroad. You don't have to go through the awkwardness of mispronouncing words or not being understood because of your accent. Regarding presidents and prime ministers, they usually come from privileged wealthy families, which allows them to afford the ridiculously costly higher education of English speaking nations.

5:41 But you must remember that English is the main official language of Singapore, and they are known for their English language education