I also expect the committee to make a strong recommendation for language training. It is not good to have a diplomat who can only communicate in English. Anywhere you go in the world, foreign diplomats speak foreign languages in addition to English; it may be French, it may be Arabic, it may be Portuguese, it may be Spanish. In the years gone by, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs placed emphasis on language training. For example, I went to a university in Portugal where I studied Portuguese for one year; then i was posted to Brazil where I spent five years; from there, I was posted to Angola. The training allowed me to polish my Portuguese and now I can describe, I can write, I can translate in Portuguese language. Where you have a diplomat who doesn’t understand any other language apart from English, he is handicapped in the performance of his job. Sometimes you find that people are more comfortable with you when they know that they can discuss in their own language, but where they find that you speak only English, maybe certain things they may want to discuss with you, they will not because you don’t share much in common.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 04:41:43 +0000
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