and neither does the French president, nor the French Prime Minister.

See the pic linked to the german sentence.

I'd say it's a shame for a head of state to not understand a commonly used language at all, but not a shame to not be able to understand it, especially oral speech, at a professional level. This is a complicated feat to achieve and their job duties lie elsewhere.

>I'd say it's a shame for a head of state to not understand a commonly used language at all

Well, then should over 5 billion people be ashamed ?

Anyway, I don't understand a Russian who speaks English...English is very difficult to understand across accents. I have also difficulties to understand Merkel, Renzi or Barrosso when they speak English, because their English is far from excellent.
I think it's a very bad idea to use English at international summit. It's the worst possible choice for a lingua franca.
Experts at the EU tell us that 50 to 80% is incorrectly transcribed from a given language into another one across English. That means the biggest power makers in the world base their decisions on misunderstanding 50 to 80% of the time.
No wonder the world is such a mess !

>See the pic linked to the german sentence.

I noticed that François Hollande doesn't wear a headset every time he takes part in an English-speaking assembly.
The only explanation is : he is not listening, or the electronics he's wearing is very discreet, because he doesn't understand English, nor speaks it, but, unlike Putin, he is ashamed of it, which is actually what is really shameful.

Over 5 billion people are heads of state? Bah.

I know English has pretty perverted phonetics, sadly, but we can still speak slowly! :D
(No hope of converting to Esperanto any soon, apparently.)

Of course, the best thing would be to have everyone speak their native language and then have this translated to everyone else's respective native languages, but I guess they think it would involve too much translation work. Also too many headphones, hehe. And people will still have to speak slowly. Then again, it's optimal for an international conference that everyone speaks slowly and articulately for ease of others' understanding.

>Over 5 billion people are heads of state? Bah.

and who says heads of states should speak English ? Why not Mandarin ? Why not Spanish ?

>I know English has pretty perverted phonetics, sadly, but we can still speak slowly!

Speed is not the problem. English features 30 vowel sounds (against 5 in Esperanto or Spanish...). I don't speak Russian. So I don't know your vowels and how they influence your speaking of English (but I know as hell they do !) no more than I know Mandarin and Mandarin's vowels.
So, unless you are an excellent speaker of English (which is rarely the case with any head of State, even natives...), the chance is that out of theses 30 vowel sounds, I will make out a maximum of 5 to 10, because of your (strange to me) accent. That means I don't understand most of what you say, hard as I listen.
A good proof for me, French, is English spoken by Italians. Although Italian is so close to French, and they have only 5 x 2 vowels (x2 because they can be accented or not), I have much difficulties understanding English by Italians (including Matteo Renzi)
The further you language is from mine, the worst the problem is.
I doubt, even if Hollande spoke English, he could understand anything of what Poroshenko says in English anyway. And I am sure Putin, if he had a decent English, could understand nothing of what Renzi or Barroso say with their strong latin accents.

This is all a big mascarade !

Pretending to understand each other, for sheer ridiculous pride, is actually more detrimental to world communication than not to understand each other at all, because in this latter case, obviously, there's a chance of getting a not-too-catastrophic translator, hoping he has a notion of the topic...

>Then again, it's optimal for an international conference that everyone speaks slowly and articulately for ease of others' understanding.

But look at them ! Do they speak slowly ? Does Cameron speak slowly ? Does Putin ? Does Merkel ? Nooooo !

And you know why ?
Because they all are in representation mode. They don't care whether their counterparts understand them or not. They want THEIR own populations to see them on TV speaking in resolute words, looking like "true leaders".
And that is why it's all a mascarade and they never achieve but total misunderstanding.

And that's terrible. I mean, it actually is. I've got you to throw some points at me and they are well sharp, that means they are fine, good points.
(Well, formal speeches are usually (tried to be) delivered rather articulately, but during the actual talks I don't suppose they bother maintaining exceptional speech clarity. It's all interpreters' job, apparently...)
And the stronk aksents many heads of state have seem rather silly.
---
Russian's simple with vowels, we've only got six (but consonants are doubled regarding palatalization, so I figure there are more consonantal sounds than in French or English or German etc.).

>Russian's simple with vowels, we've only got six

But that's precisely the main problem ! Russians' rendering of 30 english vowel sounds from a base of 6 (different ones) is anything you can guess, if you're not Russian.
This is exactly why I don't understand Italians when they speak English.
Plus they don't pay attention to the vowel length (which is also a problem we French have, even in a worst way, because the vowel length is completely irrelevant in French...)

>Well, formal speeches are usually (tried to be) delivered rather articulately,

Well, it's not obvious in the video of Putin speaking of Sotchi. I couldn't even understand the 14 in 2014 ! Although I imagine he has worked very hard to prepare that speech.
So imagine in a multiparty talk...It just doesn't work at all !


"Yes, we'll make err...peace in 20xx" "What did he say ?" "He said they'll make a piece in 20yy" "a piece of what ?"

>And the stronk aksents many heads of state have seem rather silly.

But how many people are actually conscious of having a strong accent ? Everybody denies it.
I live close to Dutch and Flemish populations. Because Dutch is so close to English, Dutch speakers tend to believe they speak English from birth and need no effort at all to speak it. But that's very wrong. Dutch pronunciation is very different from English pronunciation.
Result : they understand very well each other in English, and so do English people who know their accent (although there are variations...), but if you're neither a Dutch nor English native, it's impossible to understand much of what they say in English.
And because they are so convinced that their English is perfect, because most English natives used to their accent understand most of what they say, they think you're an idiot who doesn't speak English and the problem is you. And they'll never make any effort to improve their pronunciation.

Maybe you don't remember Jacques Delors, a former French EU President. He used to speak English at the same speed and with exactly the same accent as when he was speaking French.
The result was absolutely catastrophic. Only us French could - hardly - understand him, and couldn't stop laughing, so even us would miss what he was actually saying...
He could never figure out what a different accent was. I imagine nobody ever told him it existed.

Although he was at the head of the largest economy in the world, and one of the most integrated multicultural institution on Earth, and although he was a most brilliant man, he was unable to question his accent. At NO point did he ever wonder if anybody could make anything of what he was saying in English.
So if HE didn't, imagine all the idiots below...

When I attend conferences here in Brussels, and I hear non natives exchanging in English, honest, the exchanges are usually very poor, because most of it is lost in wrong pronunciation and the only thing it produces is sheer dismay and frustration.

Wow, I couldn't have imagined someone on that level to be that ignorant concerning pronunciation clarity, but turns out it's apparently very much possible? That's really quite astounding; I would never speak English as fast as I can speak Russian if I wanted to be understood. Actually, when I converse in English over Skype, I make sure to put emphasis on useful words here and there so they are heard well and I'm more likely to be understood, although one still has to ask to repeat occasionally.

So that's a problem most people who matter don't care to have solved, apparently...

>So that's a problem most people who matter don't care to have solved, apparently...

You are here because language(s) matter(s) very much to you.
But languages are of interest to very few people. Most use them just as a tool.
Even though politicians can be artful manipulators of their own language, they have no ambition to achieve the same result in another one (with the exception of the rare multicultural figures, such as current French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, who is Franco-Catalan), because it's just too much effort.
Their time is fully dedicated to remain in place, and this is only achieved with the people who vote for them (or applaud them, in the case there are no fair elections), who usually speak their own language.
There are very few native English speakers who vote in Russia or France. More generally, speaking languages has zero political value.
As a matter of fact, for example in France, since the election for the EU parliament is list-based, (and that's on purpose !), the parties decide who is candidate or not. So the French deputies to the EU-parliament are only there to secure a seat (usually because they lost a national election so EU parliament is a consolation they get if they follow the party lines like nice little puppies...) In this process - which I think is the same in most EU countries - linguistic skills are at NO TIME regarded. We send deputies to the EU-parliament that speak absolutely NO foreign languages.