British foreign secretary speaks japanese.

[DaveAgain]

Just seen a short video of the current UK foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, speaking japanese, which I find pretty impressive. (I think his wife is japanese)

https://twitter.com/foreignoffice/statu ... 9657286657

I believe he's also been interviewed in french in the past too, but switched to english during the interview.

[Cavesa]

He's awesome!

Were I an important person in the room and he talking like this in my native language, I would be likely to agree to lots of stuff. This is what respect looks like, he immediately appears more trustworthy, I would say. This is much harder to fake than just a smile and nod behind an interpreters back or during a photo shoot for the journals.

It is obvious from the video. The same phrases wouldn't have the same impact, if they were just plainly said in English with either na interpreter basically doing the actual speech instead of the secretary, or with the japanese being expected to just understand English. This is a clear answer to all those people in favour of just using human interpreters all the time or, even worse, the machine translation.

Thanks for sharing this! I might watch it again.

I wish we had such competent people in similar places. In this country, it is not automatic for such an important politician to speak even Czech right, let alone foreign languages.

[rdearman]

He's awesome!

competent

Two words I have never before seen associated with Jeremy Hunt.

[Cavesa]

He's awesome!

competent

Two words I have never before seen associated with Jeremy Hunt.

1.Well, this forum is more about his language skills that he uses for the job, not the other aspects.
2.If politics was allowed here, I could make him look awesome by comparing him to our "jewels" in just a few paragraphs.
3.Congratulations then, it looks like you've seen everything now