If you can speak one sentence of Mandarin, you know much more Mandarin than I do. Still, the Mandarin he’s flashed on TV has been questionable. Someone on Reddit says Huntsman’s comment last night was “In two months, Governor Romney will have much success.”
Yeah, I don’t know how much pre-interviewing goes on at the Cobert Report, but if he pulled that out spontaneously, then that sounds like someone who has a little conversational Chinese under their belt.
If he knew the question was coming, and he practiced that one sentence, then that’s a different story. But you know how you watch a movie, and someone is supposed to know how to speak Chinese and they have the words down, but they lack that lyrical quality? Yeah, he seemed to have that lyrical quality. I think this deuce may know some Mandarin.
But, again…I have no idea, truthfully. I wish I knew Chinese.
(Just clicked the link…er…maybe I should read that)
I’m not saying he knows no Mandarin at all. He obviously does. I’m saying that he’s been reported to be a fluent speaker and has maybe made that claim himself, and according to other people who speak the language, he doesn’t speak the language fluently.
In his defense, adults who learn a foreign language will lose fluency if they don’t use it continously. So is it possible that he used to be fluent, but now has forgotten enough that he is reduced to faking it?
I’m assuming he learned Chinese as part of his mormon mission. That would have been a long time ago, yes?
Yes, but he was the U.S. ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011.
Right. The Foreign Service makes sure that reporting officers have a six month course under their belts before deploying. Generally, they are expected to have a 2-2 fluency or better, which means you should be able to converse on a basic level and read at the same level. I was support staff and was able to hit a 2-2 in Portuguese and a 2-2+ in French without exerting a whole lot of effort. Not fluent by a long shot. I would think that with a language like Mandarin with no cognates, fluency may be more difficult.
Ambassadors aren’t necessarily vetted by the Foreign Service, though, are they?
In my experience at least, becoming fluent in Chinese is much more of a concentrated full time job than becoming fluent in a language closer to one’s own. I’m fairly decent in Chinese at this point, but for some things I can still read German more easily than I can Chinese–and my German is very, very rusty. Heck, I can read some languages I don’t know at all, like Spanish, and my best guess might at times be on par with my best guess of some of the more oddly constructed Chinese newspaper articles.
So in short, unless Huntsman himself is boasting that he’s actually fluent in Chinese, I’d cut him some slack if he’s not on par with someone who’s studied a Germanic or Romance language and their respective abilities in those languages.
Per your tenure track question…from wikipedia: (my emphasis)
In 1967, the family moved to Denver, Colorado. She attended St. Mary’s Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, graduating in 1971. After studying piano at the Aspen Music Festival and School, Rice enrolled at the University of Denver, where her father was then serving as an assistant dean.
Rice’s initial college major was piano, but after realizing she did not have the talent to play professionally, she began to consider an alternative major.[10][12] She attended an international politics course taught by Josef Korbel, which sparked her interest in the Soviet Union and international relations. Rice later described Korbel (who was the father of Madeleine Albright, a future U.S. Secretary of State), as a central figure in her life.
If you know anything about the Denver MSA, Cherry Hills is not exactly the low rent district. I just get tired of the “branding” of her as some “poor sharecroppers daughter from Alabama that overcame great hardship and is now a Republican”.
Smart? Yes.
Accomplished? Yes.
Grew up in the segregated south? Yes, until she was 13–when they moved to Denver.
Per your speaking Russian question…this was debunked in 2005 during her trip to Russia in a story by Reuters that has since been taken down. The link was: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=8235643
I’m not sure I understand the question. There are, of course, career diplomats and appointed ambassadors. They all answer to the SecState and the POTUS. They are all vetted by Congress and the FBI. Here’s a good video that explains it. I’m not sure how that relates to learning a language, however. I’m sure if an ambassador doesn’t want to bother with language training, he/she won’t be challenged on it, but it’s going to limit their ability to function.
When someone pointed out that Huntsman had been appointed ambassador to China, you cited the Foreign Service standards for language ability. I pointed out that being appointed ambassador doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with meeting any standards set by the Foreign Service. George H.W. Bush was effectively in the same position in the 1970s, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t speak Chinese.
Ah, got it. Probably the only input the FS might have would be the SecState advising the President on his picks. The security background investigation by the Fibbies would reveal any clearance issues.
“Koxinga?! Jactitation the!”
I’m just impressed Google Translate knows ‘Jactitation’.
Just a reminder, we ask that all posts on here be in English.
Klptzyxm. Oh, no! Drat you, Superma-
It happens all the time–someone comes on radio or TV and claims to “speak” a bunch of languages. The journalists ooo and ahhh, but what does it really mean to “speak” a language? (They may say a few sentences on the air, but that’s not enough to tell.) Truly evaluating speaking and listening skills in a language–any language–is extremely complex and involved–it’s a challenge even for those of us who do it professionally. And yet, journalists will just accept it because, really, it’s pretty hard to check. You have to find a native speaker of the language in question who at some time encountered the person and engaged with them for enough time using that language to actually give an evaluation. So it’s already second-hand, subjective information.
Basically, “fluency” has a rather, err, “fluid” definition. Living in a foreign country, I’ve met people that think they are fluent because they can get the gist of simple tabloid newspaper article. On the other side there are people like me that work in a foreign language but never use the word “fluent” (mainly because I feel if I do use it I will look an idiot the one time I don’t understand something …).
How does any of this relate to how someone with a PhD from an admittedly lesser institution gets a tenure track job at an elite university like Stanford? I should think that they hire predominantly Harvard-level folks; Michigan-level people might get that gig if they catch enough breaks. Is/was Denver extremely well thought of in Sovietology? Did Rice have some other impressive qualifications before landing her Stanford position? I’m not seeing it.