The most common foreign language of American presidents is Latin (12 fluent presidents) followed by Greek (7 fluent speakers) and French (6 fluent speakers). This led me down a rabbit hole of fun facts:
- No Latin or Greek speakers led the USA after the 1800s. Except Herbert Hoover, who was fluent in Latin and conversant in Mandarin Chinese.
- Oddly, every president who was fluent in Greek was also fluent in Latin. Hurray for classical education?
- John Quincy Adams was the most multilingual president. He was fluent in Latin French, and German, and partially fluent in Dutch, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.
- Barak Obama used to be fluent in Indonesian, having attended school there from 6 to 10.
- James Madison liked dead languages. He was fluent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew (which was dead in the 1700s when he learned it).
