♱Polyglot Pope♱

 

Hello! For this post, I watched another video from Langfocus titled “Polyglot Popes: What languages does the Pope Speak”? I pray often but am not very active with the church. It is embarrassing that I never thought about the Pope speaking more than two languages. I knew he spoke Spanish, but I’ll be honest: I didn’t even know where he was from before watching this video. The current Pope, Pope Francis, became the Pope in 2013 and is from Argentina. The Pope also speaks Italian fluently. When I was younger, I remember seeing him on TV when he’d address the public; he would be speaking Italian, which I misunderstood as Spanish. Italian is the official language of the Vatican, so I would assume that every Pope would be fluent there. Pope Francis can also speak Portuguese, German, and French.

Although the Pope is one of the most famous religious figures, and I assume that most people hold him to a higher standard, it still amazes me that he has the drive and discipline to learn multiple languages. By watching this video, I learned that Pope Francis recently learned English and spoke English publicly for the first time in South Korea while visiting. While this is an older video, I know his English has improved since that visit to Seoul. The other languages the Pope knows are Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, three literary languages. I want to dedicate time one day to learning another language and visiting a different country to test my skills. I think it’s more common in other countries to know more than one language versus here in the U.S., but since we live by the border and we all know Spanish, I guess I have a headstart to being trilingual.

 

 

Jorgensen, Paul. “Polyglot Popes: What language does the Pope speak?” Youtube, uploaded by Langfocus, 18 September 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVqKBVYuITg. Accessed 28 April 2023.