RoyaltyWeekly, our royalty expert Wim Dehandschieter answers pressing questions about our Belgian royal family in the section ‘Do they drink fizz in the royal family?’ at Qmusic. This week the question was: “How many languages does the king speak?”
Editorial Jan 23 2024
French is the king’s mother tongue, Dutch is his second language. But sometimes things go a bit wrong, such as with the birth of his first child Elisabeth. Then it sounded like this: ‘We are very happy parents. The child is very beautiful. And it’s really a female. We’re happy it’s a girl.’ “That was translated too literally from French,” Wim Dehandschieter explains. “But the king speaks at least five languages. In addition to French and Dutch, he also speaks German, English and Italian. His mother Paola is Italian.”
According to Wim, Crown Princess Elisabeth is the greatest linguist of the Belgian royal family. “She speaks French and English. Since the age of fifteen, she has studied mainly in Wales, England. We have also heard her speak German, even fluently at the age of thirteen or fourteen. She can also do Chinese. She once studied that at children’s university.” Princess Elisabeth speaks Dutch flawlessly, the best of the royal family. “Filip and Mathilde made the choice to send Elisabeth to a Dutch-speaking school since she was a toddler. She also had a Dutch-speaking nanny. She watched the youth news program ‘Karrewiet’ to learn Dutch. She was only allowed to practice ballet at a Dutch-speaking academy in Asse. She speaks Dutch so well that she even had to take extra lessons in French. Not so much to speak but to write French.” Queen Mathilde made sure that her children did not use the French and Dutch languages interchangeably in the same sentence, because that irritated her. “She really didn’t think that ‘You’re prends my book bag’,” said Wim.
(Read more below the photo)
Wim Dehandschieter / Crown Princess Elisabeth. © Qmusic / Royal Palace / Bas Bogaerts
Polish roots
Does the Dutch Queen Máxima, who comes from Argentina, speak better Dutch than Queen Mathilde? “No, I do not think so. But everything has to do with a first impression. Máxima came to the Netherlands to marry Willem-Alexander and immediately spoke a few words of Dutch, very charming of course. Mathilde, a French speaker born in Belgium, did not yet speak Dutch very well. But she has gradually learned it, even though she says she sometimes has problems with sentence construction, the pronunciation of sounds and stresses. That French accent will never go away, but I think Mathilde speaks Dutch more correctly than Máxima.” Striking: Mathilde has Polish roots but does not speak a word of Polish. “That led to strange situations during a state visit to Poland years ago. She even had to use an interpreter to understand Polish.”
According to Wim, Princess Delphine and Queen Paola are the least proficient in Dutch. “I’ve never heard Delphine speak Dutch, maybe she doesn’t understand it. And Paola is not really up to speed with Dutch, despite a language immersion, which was to her disadvantage, because she was not really popular in Flanders.”
Prince Laurent started taking Arabic lessons ten years ago through a private teacher. He wished he and his three children learned Arabic to communicate better with people. “He claims he can read the Quran, but I haven’t heard him speak much Arabic since then…,” Wim concludes.
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2024-01-23 19:29:41
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