BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?

Subject: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: clueless don
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 10:04 AM

I have a definite recollection of hearing a news report (many years ago) that U.S. President Richard M. Nixon (at least, I'm about 95% sure it was Nixon, the other 5% thinks it might have been Reagan) was once giving a speech somewhere in Canada. According to the report, he prefaced his speech by attempting to give some sort of greeting in French, but didn't do it very well. When he was done with his attempt at speaking French, he is reported to have said something like "I guess I speak French like a Canadian."

On the one hand, this sounds so outrageous that it is hard to believe that it actually happened. I could believe "I guess I speak French like an American", but not what was reported. On the other hand, I have a very definite recollection of hearing this report.

Can anyone confirm or deny that this actually happened?

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 10:29 AM

Apr. 14, 1972 Richard M. Nixon addressed the Joint Sessions of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada. Dunno if the contents are what you're looking for, though.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 10:42 AM

From the "topic list" of the Nixon WHitehouse recordings just before Nixon's Canadian speech:

        Conversation No. 708-7

Date: April 13, 1972
Time: Unknown between 4:34 pm and 4:37 pm
Location: Oval Office

The President rehearsed French portions of a speech for his Canadian trip.

Speech
        -Rehearsal in French



        Conversation No. 708-8

Date: April 13, 1972
Time: Unknown between 4:34 pm and 4:37 pm
Location: Oval Office

The President resumed rehearsing French portions of a speech for his Canadian trip.

Looks like this is the one you were looking for, maybe?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: clueless don
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 11:03 AM

Yes, Amos, that's the one! Thank you!

I found it at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/docs/pppus/nixon/1972/122.htm (sorry, I haven't learned to do the "blue clicky thing" yet.) Turns out that it was not quite as I remembered it. According to this source, after giving the French greeting the President said:

To all of you who have welcomed Mrs. Nixon and me so warmly on this occasion, I trust you will give me allowances for trying to speak in the language that I studied 37 years ago. When I tried it, the day before I came, on the top linguist in the American Government, General Walters, he said, "Go ahead. You speak French with a Canadian accent."

Not quite as insensitive as I remembered it, but still pretty embarassing, I think.

Thanks again!

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 11:10 AM

This was just about a month before the later-infamous "plumbers' breakin" at the Chilean Embassy which foreshadowed the Watergate scandal and snowballed to Nixon's forced resignation. A month after that( 6/17/1972), five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate hotel at 1:52 a.m. Within hours of the bust G. Gordon Liddy attempted to shred all related documents.

Carl Schloffler (1945-1996), undercover police officer, made the arrest. Little could he have imagined he was starting something that would topple an American President!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 11:36 AM

As much as I hate to give him credit for anything, George "no W" Bush DOES speak pretty fair Spanish. No French, though.

Trivial time: In the year or so before his death, the music Nixon listened to the most was.......rap. "The only valid American political rhetoric today"

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Ebbie
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 01:13 PM

Rap, misophist? Certainly not this generation of rap. Nixon died almost 30 years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: GUEST,naughty guest
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 01:27 PM

Ebbie? How time flies. It seems like only eight.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Ebbie
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 01:36 PM

Naughty guest, if a timeline were done linking only same-political- persuasion parties, I suspect we would see that each progressive step is a logical outcome. Looking at it that way, our current administration's Big Brother mindset seems the very next step to Nixon's paranoia.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 01:40 PM

Ebbie --

Don't forget that Bushwah the Elder learned his mantra at Nixon's knees as that the Nixon mindset is directly traceable down to King George (kill for Dad) the Second.

I recommend the current book "THe Bush Dyslexicon" for an indepth analsyis of the Nixon==>Bush 1==>Reagan==>Bush 2 chain of philosophical and political influence.

Except for Georgie 2's occasional submergence in beer and cocaine, it is a fairly clear path of inheritance.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: GUEST,naughty guest
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 01:41 PM

http://www.dubyadubyadubya.com

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Ebbie
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 01:45 PM

Redfaced Correction : Nixon did NOT die almost 30 years ago. (The older I get, the faster time moves, but not quite that fast) He died in 1994, not '74.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: artbrooks
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 02:09 PM

Well, Nixon was far from my favorite president, but "speaking French with a Canadian accent" as embarrassing? So does my wife, and I expect so do almost all Francophone canadians.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 03:02 PM

Ya' know, we are a really third rate culture/country when it comes to second languages. Some would argue that English isn't our first language anyway as we have bastardized it into an American language all it's own. Whatever the case, it seems most of our presidents have at least tried to be cool and do these little language bits and it almost always is a disaster in one way or another. I mean really, who can forget JFK in Berlin proudly proclaiming he was a donut? And what was the one with Eisenhower and some South American country? Damn...memory is the first (or second) thing to go.......anyway.........

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 03:18 PM

"As much as I hate to give him credit for anything, George "no W" Bush DOES speak pretty fair Spanish. No French, though."

Well misophist, I won't give him ANY credit for having any bilingual or multilingual sensitivities. His appointed an ambassador to France who doesn't even speak French! So I'd call that linguistic hostility!

From the NYT:

April 20, 2001, Friday
Public Interests; Try a Little Helpfulness
By GAIL COLLINS
Now that the job market is softening, you're probably asking yourself: What does it take to become a U.S. ambassador in a country with a nice climate and no cultural tradition of hostage-taking?
There are a number of excellent job opportunities available in the Bush administration. Just recently, Clay Johnson, the White House director of presidential personnel, told The Times's Marc Lacey and Raymond Bonner what questions the president asks himself when he screens ambassadorial candidates: ''Is the person a longtime friend? How close does he feel to the person? Has the person really gone out of their way to help him become president?''

The definition of ''help'' is a little hazy. It is against the law to take campaign contributions into consideration when picking ambassadors. Mr. Johnson must have been referring to people who gave the president rides to the airport in inclement weather.

The law also says ambassadors should speak the language of the countries to which they're posted. Mr. Bush has shown a strong commitment to this principle by nominating as ambassador to Britain William Farish, a family friend and horse breeder who is fluent in English.

Howard Leach, an agricultural business investment banker who does not speak French, has been nominated to be ambassador to France, a nation famous for its patience and tolerance in dealing with Americans who don't know the language. But Mr. Leach, whose helpfulness involved a stint as chairman of the Republican National Committee, is said to be taking lessons.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 03:21 PM

Oops! misophist, were you referring to Bush I or Bush II? The NYT excerpt above is referring above to the latter.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 03:52 PM

JFK's Berliner comment

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: clueless don
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 04:09 PM

To artbrooks: The problem, as I see it, wasn't that he spoke French "with a Canadian accent", if indeed he did. The problem was that he used the expression "You speak French with a Canadian accent" in front of a Canadian audience, on Canadian soil. I realize that he was referring to himself, not his audience. Still, while it may be true, as you imply, that there is such a thing as a Canadian accent for the majority of French-speaking Canadians, I think such a remark - coming from an American - might have been construed by many Canadians as an implication that French as spoken by Canadians is somehow inferior to French as spoken by others (e.g. the French.) I believe there was some controversy over this remark at the time.

If, in fact, Canadians at the time took no offense and were pleased by the fact that an American president had taken the trouble to learn a French greeting to begin this address, I am ready to be corrected.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Gareth
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 04:13 PM

Actually I am old enough to remember a politician going to Canada and adressing his audience in french - but that was Charles DeGaul, so I suppose that does not count.

Gareth (Tounge in cheek)

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 04:55 PM

Why would the comment imply inferiority? Don't Canadians speak French with a different accent and dialect than Parisians? Don't Parisians speak with a different accent and dialect than people in other parts of France? Don't people in Nigeria speak French differently as well?

I'm in Tennessee. I speak English differently than someone from Minnesota or New Jersey, or even someone in another Southern state. It's not better or worse, it's just different.

Seems to me, though, that if he were addressing a Canadian audience, he'd want to sound like one of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 05:11 PM

Probably true Kim.

And as your linked article states, I too doubt that too many people in the audience for JFK's speech took it as anything other than the way he meant it, but it was a mistake and some did get a laugh out of the situation. My point here is that this kind of thing always strikes me as rubbish. Learning a few lines phonetically as some sort of respectful, goodwill gesture, is pretty lame and usually better for it's laugh value than anything else. Kennendy could as well have said based on the history of Berlin and the airlift, etc., "We in the U.S. are all citizens of Berlin." or something along those lines.

It's much different when someone actually speaks a language to give their speech in the language of the country they are in. Many people come to the US and speak English.....We are probably the worst at not returning the favor!!!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: GUEST,naughty guest
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 05:11 PM

Guy LaFleur refused to speak french in France becuase of the attitude he received.

That said, you really, really need to be looking for something to get hot under the collar about with this one.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: GUEST,naughty guest
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 05:29 PM

There is a thread with a post from soemone who claims to have been a German in attendance at the donought speech, and he took strong exception to the joke, claiming that the words had a strong impact, upon all present, in its intended meaning. He claimed the donut joke was devised by Americans long after the fact. (I can't get the search function to work.)

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Kim C
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 05:39 PM

According to the article, JFK had help from a professional translator. Maybe he was playing a joke on him, I don't know... Anyway, apparently a Berliner is a doughnut AND a resident of Berlin! Hmmmmmmmmmm......... the implications are staggering...............

Sometimes, though, there are things that don't make sense in the translation, just because of the way languages are. For instance, in the German translation of Alice in Wonderland I've been reading, the Cheshire Cat is a Harzer Katze. Mad Maudlin, who has been very kind to help me with my German, told me that Harzer is a kind of........ cheese. Now see if you can figure that one out.

I'm hungry. I love doughnuts and haven't had any in a long while. (but hey, I am cooking filet mignons with George Foreman tonight!)

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 05:59 PM

Geeziz keericed woman!!! You're gonna' screw up filet mignon with George???? Fire up the charcoal.....or even the gas....at least something with a flame!!!! I like George too, but for Filet Mignon he gets the Ali treatment!!! Get out the real grill dear!!!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 08:08 PM

I'd have thought that saying to Nixon that he was speaking French with a Canadian accent would be a compliment. Probably an undeserved comnpliment, but that's another matter. What other kind of French do Canadians speak anyway, as Kim C remarks?

Kennedy saying "I'm a Berliner" must have sounded funny to Germans. I just just hoping they send Bush to Hamburg some time, and he copies the speech and reveals tomteh the world that he's a Hamburger.

Are there any other cities or regions inviting the same kind of goof from visiting politicians trying to ingratiate themselves with the local population?

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Sorcha
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 08:25 PM

Well, Chesire is a kind of cheese in English,too........

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 08:26 PM

KimC--

Thanks so much for that link!! I have always been slightly embarassed about JFK's supposed gaffe and I am really pleased to hear it was no gaffe, just a canard of distortion in reports. It was not a mistake in the context, even to the use of the article "ein".

A

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 09:07 PM

Yes but you wouldn't say "I'm a Cheshire". There must surely be other places where the same word is used as the name of the natives as for soime local delicacy. (Actually in some places "I'm a Native" could mean you were claiming to be an Oyster.)

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Ebbie
Date: 12 Dec 02 - 10:20 PM

Pah! I've never understood it as an issue. As the article says, if one were to say: 'I am a danish', everyone would understand it as nonsense. But in a sentence where something of the sort can be taken more than one way, why do people persist in perceiving it as a gaffe?

If I said that I 'crossed the river at a ford', would someone laugh forever after because I should have said 'in a Ford'?

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 02 - 12:07 AM

Good point, Ebbie - -and what we ar elooking at is the peculiar appetite of humans (and the bizarre media that feeds them) of making nothing out of others, even using false data if no true data is available. I think we must be the only species that ebgages in this kind of super-criticality at all cost aimed at its own kind. Not to mention at itself, individual to inidividual.,

A

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 13 Dec 02 - 01:26 AM

Re: Kennedy and the donut. My friend Karl-Heinz heard the speech on the radio in Bad Sachingen. He tells me that most Germans forgave Kennedy for saying "I'm a SUGAR donut" because they don't think Berliners speek German well enough to know the difference. He thought many were touched by the comment.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: clueless don
Date: 13 Dec 02 - 09:41 AM

OK, the consensus seems to be that there was nothing in the remark by President Nixon that might be considered offensive, and if anything it was probably taken as a compliment.

I was going on the idea that if a CANADIAN (particularly a French-Canadian) said "we speak French with a Canadian accent", it would be perfectly fine and might be a point of pride, but if an AMERICAN implied that Canadians speak French with an accent, Canadians might be offended. Perhaps that thought process did an injustice, on my part, to Canadians.

My original purpose in starting this thread was to find out what was actually said in that address, and that has been accomplished. My thanks to Amos and everyone else who posted.

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: Kim C
Date: 13 Dec 02 - 10:03 AM

Sorcha, that's what I thought, but I wasn't sure.

Spaw, it's been raining here the last few days, so we have been reduced to indoor grilling. Actually they aren't too bad that way. Agreed, though, charcoal is always best. :-)

Et maintenant, j'ai une tasse de cafe. Oder auf deutsche, ich trinke eine tasse kaffe. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Nixon speaking French in Canada - true?
From: GUEST,Willie-O cookieless
Date: 13 Dec 02 - 11:10 AM

Geez its fascinating to see well-meaning Yanks get their knickers in a knot about a non-event of 30 years ago.

If there is a Canadian accent, Nixon sure didn't have one. The notion that he could speak a language he didn't know with an accent he didn't have is just plain silly. I think his "top linguist" was an idiot. But a lousy accent was the least of his crimes.

What, you're not all Yanks? Wey-ell, fry ma grits.

It's a well-worn political ritual for anglo politicians, expecially from the west, to come to Quebec and try to speak French. Nixon wasn't the first, the last or the worst. What a lot of Quebecois REALLY wouldn't like is being told they speak with a Canadian accent. Yer Quebecois (kebbekwa) are very nationalistic--as in Quebec nationalists--especially in linguistic matters. There are well-known distinctions between Quebec French and Parisian French, but it's a special little cultural spat between Quebec and France which doesn't involve the rest of Canada.

The typical reaction of bilingual Quebeckers to an anglo addressing them in deficient French is to appreciate the effort, and switch immediately to English for mutual convenience.

Myself, I have this problem, my French accent isn't too bad, but my vocabulary is very limited. So sometimes I make a monosyllabic comment at a Montreal bus station wicket or somewhere, and receive a rapid and voluble reply en francais that causes me to demonstrate my idiot shrug and "je regret que je ne comprends pas". So I usually prefer to finish my conversations with my francophone compatriots with a "merci bien" or other parting words which don't require me to understand anything else.

And yes, we have completely internalized using the terms "anglophone" and "francophone", generally a reference to one's first language, to avoid that tricky business about "Canadian", a term which for us has no linguistic implications whatsoever but says a lot about your politics.

Willie-O
Canadian, anglo, Ontarian