. The language that dare not speak its name came burbling back last week. .as Kerry visited Paris on his first official trip as Secretary of State. His fluent French -- honed as a Swiss boarding school and on vacations at a family house in the Breton village of Saint Briac-sure-Mer -- was now an asset. . . In a scratchy baritone, Kerry said, in French, that he's just finished a delicious lunch. He concluded by saying, "And now I'll speak in English, because otherwise they won't let me return home.: The French press swooned, "LE NUMERO DE CHARME EN FRANCAIS DE JOHN KERRY" was the headline in Le Monde.
America's other leading Francophone of late is the actor Bradley Cooper, who studied the language at Georgetown. . and spent half a year as an exchange student in Aix-en-Provence. .
. .So in a French-off, who would win? Camille Chevalier-Karfis. . agreed to be the judge.
" First, he has a good accent," she said of Kerry. "He sounds upper-class, he speaks slowly, his voice is really pleasant in French." Chevalier faulted Kerry only for his stilted delivery and the occasional ascending intonation. "He reads a script, which must mean that he's self-conscious," she said."I'd give him a few glasses of wine and see how he does."
. . Chevalier was impressed by Cooper's gliding elisions, his comprehension of French humor, and his use of casual words like "mec" ("guy&quot . His mistakes were frequent but minor. . "
It was a tie, but bonus points went to Kerry, who, it turned out, when he addressed a town-hall meeting in Berlin, also speaks German. "Sehr gut, danke", he said, to applause. "Alles gut"