Polyglot monarchs or politicians?

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Ezra
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Re: Polyglot monarchs or politicians?

Postby Ezra » Thu Oct 04, 2018 6:34 pm

Why not?
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cjareck
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Re: Polyglot monarchs or politicians?

Postby cjareck » Thu Oct 04, 2018 6:57 pm

Otto von Habsburg, the son of last Austro-Hungarian emperor, Charles I was able to speak German, Hungarian, Croatian, English, Spanish, French and Latin fluently, as English Wikipedia states.
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Re: Polyglot monarchs or politicians?

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Oct 04, 2018 8:04 pm

From the Wikipedia article on Cleopatra:
Ptolemaic pharaohs were crowned by the Egyptian High Priest of Ptah at Memphis, Egypt, but resided in the multicultural and largely Greek city of Alexandria, established by Alexander the Great of Macedon.[16][17][18][note 8] They spoke Greek and governed Egypt as Hellenistic Greek monarchs, refusing to learn the native Egyptian language.[19][20][21][note 6] In contrast, Cleopatra could speak multiple languages by adulthood and was the first Ptolemaic ruler to learn the Egyptian language.[22][23][21][note 9] She also spoke Ethiopian, Trogodyte, Hebrew (or Aramaic), Arabic, the Syrian language (perhaps Syriac), Median, Parthian, and Latin, although her Roman contemporaries would have preferred to speak with her in her native Koine Greek.[23][21][24][note 10] Aside from Greek, Egyptian, and Latin, these languages reflected Cleopatra's desire to restore North African and West Asian territories that once belonged to the Ptolemaic Kingdom.[25]

So that's ten languages, even if the exact identities are a bit sketchy. Not too shabby! And she was the first and only ruler in a 275-year dynasty of ethnic Greek Pharaohs to learn the language of the people they ruled.
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Re: Polyglot monarchs or politicians?

Postby Iversen » Fri Oct 05, 2018 9:16 am

The late 'prinsgemal' (queen consort) of Denmark, born as Henri de Laborde de Monpezat and dubbed 'Prins Henrik', was a diplomat with a career in French Indochina before being married to our queen Margrethe II, and he spoke at least six languages fluently: French, Spanish, English, Vietnamese, Mandarin and Danish. But apparently he underestimated the need for language training when he came to Denmark and therefore always had a slight accent. And the salary recipients of the cesspit of rotten journalism known as 'dameblade' (ladies' magazines) couldn't resist making fun of him for that reason ... people who probably wouldn't be able to concoct a sentence in anything but Danish and (maybe) English. When he died they suddenly all loved him ...

According to Wikipedia and Pliny the elder, Mithridates VI of Pontus spoke all the languages of the nation(s) he governed, which would run up into something like 22 (from several language families, which wouldn't make the task easier). Even though Pliny isn't the most trustworthy source the king must have been quite competent for getting such a reputation.
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