Linguistics and Politics

It’s part of a politician’s job to open their mouths and put their feet in it. I voted for Jeremy Hunt to lead the Conservative (and Unionist) party but I will never forget him saying his wife is Japanese on a visit there. (She is Chinese.)

Edward Heath’s French pronunciation attracted derision not just in France but amongst anyone with an “O” Level in French. If I may digress, in my French Oral (not to be confused with a French Kiss) I announced I lived on a woman in Ireland – une femme. Surprisingly I passed. I suppose today I would be arrested as an under-age pimp.

Heath, of course, should have played the piano to his hosts. For some reason politicians try to woo Germans by speaking their lingo. JFK: “Ich bin ein Berliner”.  Boris Johnson: “Wir schaffen das”. No, not a slogan to sell Audis, although it might be. If, like me, you are rusty in German he said “we will get this done”, not referring to WW II but Brexit, and a man who knows said he was “admired for his charm and audacity”. That man  lives in Berlin; he is Alexander von Schoenberg. His Wiki entry reads  like a footnote in the Chips Channon diaries edited by Simon Heffer.

 “Alexander was born in 1969 in Mogadishu, Somalia to Joachim, Count von Schönburg-Glauchau, and his first wife, Countess Beatrix Széchenyi de Sárvár et Felsővidék (b. 1930). He is the youngest of four children from this marriage, after siblings Maya (b. 1958), Gloria (b. 1960), and Carl-Alban (b. 1966). Their parents divorced in 1986. Afterwards, Alexander’s father married Ursula Zwicker, and their union produced a daughter, Anabel Maya-Felicitas.

During the second half of the 1960s, Alexander’s father’s profession as a foreign correspondent took the family to Togo. They later moved to Somalia, returning to Germany to live in 1970. The family thereafter resided in Meckenheim, in the Rhineland. Following the reunification of Germany in 1990, Alexander’s father reclaimed the family’s possessions in Saxony which had been taken from them after World War II. In later years, he was elected to the Bundestag.

Alexander’s sisters, Maya and Gloria, famously wed wealthy trend setters: Maya was married to art patron Mick Flick until their divorce in 1993, while Gloria’s husband was Johannes, 11th Prince of Thurn and Taxis, until his death in 1990. His father’s younger brother, Count Rudolf (“Rudi”, born 1932), wed Princess Marie Louise of Prussia (born 1945) in 1971, and succeeded Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg as director of the Marbella Club Hotel, an aristocratic resort.“ (Wikipedia)

Two people will be disappointed today; first my friend in Oregon and secondly Simon Heffer. The former would like to join me at the Savile to dine and listen to Simon Heffer. The latter because the former has given me a signed copy of the diaries, Vol II, so I will not buy another.

If you are a couch potato this is for you. It’s work-out time.