Question for British citizens: do you know if the following people speak/spoke foreign languages (which ones?
Elizabeth II is good in French (a requirement of the Queen of Canada) Tony Blair speaks barman French. Edward Heath spoke French which made people cringe, but he was doing his best. Churchill spoke bad French entirely on purpose, refusing to amend his pronunciation when he had to read speeches in French during the war. He wrote to his foreign secretary in 1941, “If you approve I should like Livorno to be called in the English — Leghorn.” Though “if at any time you are conversing agreeably with Mussolini in Italian, Livorno would be correct.” This was the same Churchill who would write, four years later, “I do not consider that names that have been familiar for generations in England should be altered to study the whims of foreigners living in those parts.” Without a firm stand, “the B.B.C. will be pronouncing Paris ‘Paree.’ Foreign names were made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for foreign names.” He was no good at Latin and Greek at school. I have no knowledge that the others spoke an
