From Putin to Merkel to Renzi: when a leader speaks a foreign language (or at least tries)

LONDON – The electoral controversy over the excessive use of English in France offers an opportunity to take stock of the knowledge of languages ​​among world leaders. For their interviews, of course, there is an interpreter. But as anyone who has business meetings abroad knows, no simultaneous translation is as good as a conversation in the language of a foreign interlocutor. Not for nothing did Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, at one point take it into his head to learn Chinese.