FYI - Putin speaks fluent German - and Merkel fluent Russian - and did you know [View all]

[Mira]

that the Big Dog speaks an acceptable conversational German, and when on the phone with Merkel conducted most of it in German because he wanted to?

I just had a conversation with a childhood friend who lives in Germany who is politically interested and follows what's going on - especially the markets - because he has money.

He enlightened me that Angela Merkel is from the former East Block in Germany and speaks fluent Russian. And that as the head of the KGB Putin was stationed in Dresden Germany for a long time and except for the Russian rolling r speaks grammatically correct, unaccented, fluent German.

Now this may not be of interest in general on DU. But I wanted to share it anyway. Everyone can in their own minds assign some thoughts and importance to this little bit of information.

There are many things we miss in this country, vast as it is, with its universal one language. I'm disregarding Spanish for a minute and considering our lack of assigning value to it in general there are actually obvious reasons for doing so. In our mentality when it comes to our station on earth WE'RE Number ONE.
I never will forget the time a 50 year old American woman stood in front of a world map affixed to my kitchen door. After being asked I showed her where the US of A is.
"When did we get so small?" she asked.

It infuriates me to see an allocation of 14 dollars per student for school books in my town, in a state where teachers are so underpaid they personally have to subsidize the needs of students while it strangles their own needs.

I grew up in Germany, the West of it at the time, and at age 9 a second language was taught (English) and then at age 12 a third (French). This was mandatory.

I know we don't have a need for being multilingual here in America to the degree that it benefits the Europeans. But the sheer fact that we have so little exposure keeps me being surrounded by many who believe the SHIT that gets spewed on the Fox "news" channel, and makes them think they are learning something.

I just want to hold my face in my hands for a minute.
They have a nice word for that and here's a visual

So I laugh, because it's all I can do.