24

NOTE: I'm not a scholar of language and the only languages I have a working knowledge of are English, Math and Python. What is and isn't Filipino language has had a historical debate including legal and political. Please feel free to correct anything that I've got wrong here and accept my apologies!

Modern Filipino language contains many loanwords, so if one hears terms or phrases that can also be English (or Spanish) one can't necessarily say that the speaker has switched languages.

However, listening to CNN Philippines' PiliPinas Debates 2022: The Turning Point - 2nd Presidential Debate both the moderator and some of the debating candidates do switch between complete sentences in English and in Filipino. Just as one example in the 2 hour and 40 minute video, Leni Robredo's answer uses several English phrases when there is about 60 seconds left on the clock, and at 40 seconds left switches to English for several consecutive sentences and the subsequent response by Erensto Abella likewise alternates between English and Filipino.

Transcripts of a 2016 presidential debate (1, 2) also show a mixture of entire paragraphs in English.

Question: Besides the Philippines, are there any countries where presidential debates are bilingual, requiring the understanding of two (or more) languages to know what the candidates are actually saying?

uhoh
  • 16,541
  • 3
  • 76
  • 172
  • 14
    From the phrasing, I take it you don't mean Canada where the debates are bilingual, but at different times. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Apr 04 '22 at 06:31
  • 1
    @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica I hadn't thought of Canada; yes it seems if each debate is in one language it wouldn't be an answer here. But I think it's a notable situation and perhaps not limited to Canada, so I think a separate question, something like "How to countries with more than one official language handle presidential debates? would be a good companion question and Canada's solution seems like it would make for an excellent answer! – uhoh Apr 04 '22 at 07:44
  • 8
    Ukraine immediately comes to mind as a place where people on television could simultaneously use two langauges (Ukrainian and Russian), although this has probably become rarer with the intensified Ukrainization after 2014. Switzerland is a country with 4 official langauges... but I am not sure whether they have mixed-language debates. Overall, monolongual societies, like those in North America or Europe are rather an exception than a rule on the World scale. This is better discussed in linguistics community though. – Roger V. Apr 04 '22 at 07:45
  • @RogerVadim I'm not sure if that (choice of language on TV) rises to the level of linguistics proper or not. Here I'm only asking about how politicians cary out formal political debates in a way that the voting constituency can access. – uhoh Apr 04 '22 at 07:48
  • @uhoh It might be also worth looking at cases of diglossia - where the official spoken/written language differs from the langauges or dialects spoken locally. Arabic dialects vs. the Standard Arabic may be one case (pan-Arabic media are typiclaly broadcasting in Modern Arabic), Chinese dialects, India. Also, Swiss German vs. Standard German in Switzerland (they are so different that in Germany movies/broadcasts in Swiss German are usually supplied with subtitles, but Swiss Germans typically know both). – Roger V. Apr 04 '22 at 07:53
  • 3
    Maybe you should clarify whether you really want answers only about presidential debates, which would exclude all countries with non-presidential systems that have no presidential debates at all, but might have multilingual debates e.g. before parliamentary elections. – michau Apr 04 '22 at 09:42
  • @michau The question asks precisely what it wants to ask. "Besides the Philippines do any countries have bilingual presidential debates..." You are welcome to ask a follow-up question, but I recommend that you wait a few days to see how these answers unfold. And of course since an answer was posted well before your comment, it wouldn't be appropriate to alter the scope of the question. – uhoh Apr 04 '22 at 10:14
  • 3
    We had a bilingual foreign policy leader's debate in 2015 in Canada. But English translation were provided and Canada does not have a president... Debates within a party (e.g. some Conservative leadership debates) held in Quebec or in some other regions are also often officially or de facto bilingual, but interpretations are possible. – xngtng Apr 04 '22 at 16:02
  • This question is almost more about sociolinguistics than it is about politics. The behaviour you describe is not unique to presidential debates: it occurs throughout Filipino media. – TRiG Apr 04 '22 at 18:58
  • @TRiG No not really. If I had asked "Why" or "How" or "What fraction of the population...?" those might be about sociolinguistics. But I've asked only about presidential debates which are highly stylized and organized and follow specific rules chosen by the debate hosts. The way a government and politicians communicate with their (potential) constituents is very different than day-to-day conversation between individuals in society. I've kept the scope of the question narrowly focused on political events in such a way that answers can be generated without saying anything about sociolinguistics. – uhoh Apr 04 '22 at 20:15
  • @TRiG the case I've chosen -- presidential debates in the Philippines -- provides a concrete example to support the question's premise that presidential debates can sometimes be substantially bilingual to avoid comments like "What makes you think any country's presidential debates are ever bilingual?" But the question is not about Filipino media nor the Philippines at all. In fact, only countries other than the Philippines can be cited to answer this question. – uhoh Apr 04 '22 at 20:19
  • I don't think this language switching among Filipinos is specific to presidential debates. Lately I've been watching YouTube videos about cultural differences, and I've noticed that a number of videos from the Philippines, the speaker will start a sentence in English and switch to Tagalog (or whatever) mid-sentence, say a couple of sentences in Tagalog, and then switch back to English. I haven't noticed this for any other country -- but it's not like I've done a study on the subject. ... – Jay Apr 06 '22 at 15:14
  • ... I wonder if what is happening is the speaker is talking in, say, English, then they think of a word they want to say in Tagalog and can't think of the English word for it off the top of their heads, so they say the Tagaolog word, and now their brain is in "Tagalog mode" and so they speak in that language for a while. This would only apply to people who know two or more languages very well, which probably narrows down likely candidates a lot. Just speculating. – Jay Apr 06 '22 at 15:16
  • @Jay no it's definitely not specific to presidential debates; what is specific to them is how important it is for the listener to catch the meaning when it's split among languages. It's not one-to-one conversation where there is context and one can stop the other at any time to confirm something or add real-time feedback to confirm comprehension (or lack thereof). Anyway, the question is about countries other than The Philippines. It's just presented here as an example and a preemptive answer to "What makes you think any country's presidential debates are ever bilingual?" – uhoh Apr 06 '22 at 15:38
  • Anyway there are lots of Filipinos around in my area and it's really common to hear extended sentence fragments of English integrated into conversations, though usually not entire paragraphs. – uhoh Apr 06 '22 at 15:41
  • 1
    In the U.S. there have been a number of bilingual debates for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. But I'm not sure if there has ever been a Presidential debate that was genuinely bilingual. – ohwilleke Jan 29 '24 at 20:20

7 Answers7

23

Prior to the invasion of Crimea, this was common in Ukraine. In this 2009 video from the debates between Yushchenko and Yanukovych, you can see them switching freely between Russian and Ukrainian. However this tradition went away after 2014 and almost no Russian was spoken in the 2019 debates between Poroshenko and Zelensky. Given the latest escalation of the conflict, I suspect no future debates in Ukraine will be held in Russian.

Another country where this is common is Belarus. In this video of the 2015 town hall with Tatsiana Karatkevich (Lukashenko's main opponent at the time), you can see the audience asking questions in Russian while Karatkevich mostly answers them in Belarusian. Its presumed that anyone watching this program will be somewhat fluent in both languages.

JonathanReez
  • 50,757
  • 35
  • 237
  • 435
  • 2
    Not sure this counts. The Slavic languages have a high level of mutual intelligibility, and Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are all members of the East Slavic branch. The 2015 town hall you cite would be similar to an English speaker and a Scots speaker having a discussion in their native languages. – Mark Apr 05 '22 at 00:17
  • 7
    @Mark OP didn't specify the degree of mutual intelligibility – JonathanReez Apr 05 '22 at 01:32
  • 12
    @Mark, somewhat true for Belarussian, not true for Ukrainian. By some metrics (like lexical similarity) there is more similarity between French and Italian than between Russian and Ukrainian. It's actually hard for a Russian to understand fluent Ukrainian, unless one is frequently exposed to it. – Zeus Apr 05 '22 at 03:36
  • @Mark To add, this is maybe often a bias because many Ukrainians are more or less fluent in both (especially olders) since they grew up being exposed to both. I agree that they are about as similar as French and Italian, for example Spanish and Italian are even closer to each other than Ukrainian and Russian (and they're not the same language, are they?) – Mayou36 Apr 07 '22 at 12:44
21

Kenya has presidential debates where a mix of English and Kiswahili is used - see for example the second presidential debate in 2013. Candidates generally prefer to speak English but do slip into Kiswahili occasionally. To pick out one example, around the 2:36:50 mark, Mohamed Abdouba Dida from the ARK party gives his response in a mix of Kiswahili and English.

In a 2014 paper entitled The Language of Politics: A CDA of the 2013 Kenyan Presidential Campaign Discourse, James Nyachae Michira of the University of Nairobi observes that during the campaign, most candidates also employed a mix of languages to reach the widest audience:

English and Kiswahili are the official languages as provided by the constitution and politicians could use either of these languages in their campaigns. English is especially preferred in formal speeches where politicians read prepared speeches to their audiences while Kiswahili is mostly preferred during public rallies since it is the lingua franca. Typically, however, many politicians engage in code-switching and code-mixing involving those two official languages. Sometimes, they even revert to their own native tongues especially when they have a coded message meant directly to their ethnic communities. In the final analysis, few politicians are comfortable communicating entirely in either English or Kiswahili during political rallies

CDJB
  • 106,388
  • 31
  • 455
  • 516
15

Belgium doesn't have a president, but considering that the monarch is largely symbolic and it's the Prime minister who holds all the power I guess that counts as a president here? Since Belgium is a bilingual (or technically even trilingual) country in parliament the debates are often held in multiple languages. Walloon politicians speak French, Flemish politicians speak Dutch. Some even mix the two up to the point where they switch language mid-sentence.

Since the Prime ministers are not chosen directly, as is the case for presidents in the US and Philippines, there's also no presidential debates. You'll have to decide for yourself if this answer counts or not then.

Opifex
  • 259
  • 1
  • 4
  • As an aside, having an indirectly-chosen prime minister does not preclude having televised political debates. Some (most?) countries in the Anglosphere with Westminster-style systems have televised political debates. – Michael Seifert Apr 04 '22 at 17:46
  • @MichaelSeifert We definitely have political debates. And those are bilingual indeed. But we do not have those debates where two (or more) candidates face off in a television show like it is the case in the US. The debates are more party vs. party, and after the elections when the coalition has been formed, the PM is elected by the parties of the coalition. We do of course have TV debates where individual politicians debate, but they are there as representatives of their parties and not as independent candidates for the position of PM. – Opifex Apr 04 '22 at 18:00
  • Interesting. In Canada, at least, the participants in the pre-election debates are the leaders of their parties, who would become Prime Minister if their party wins a plurality. Formal coalitions between parties are relatively rare—the very recent one being a notable exception—so there's not much mystery in who will be Prime Minister if a given party gets the most seats. – Michael Seifert Apr 04 '22 at 18:06
  • @MichaelSeifert in Belgium party leaders can become PM after the elections, but it's usually not the case. Most of the time they try to get their #2 on that spot. Coalitions are a certainty here because we don't have a dual-party system. They have to cooperate in order to be able to form a government that has the majority of chairs. In some cases (as is the case with the current sitting government) the biggest party isn't even included in the coalition. In fact: right now the two biggest parties are even left out, and all the smaller ones formed a coalition. – Opifex Apr 04 '22 at 18:09
  • 4
    I think the election which determines the head of the executive branch (i.e. "the government") is what's being asked about here. If the PM controls the government, then whatever election determines who is to become the PM (even if it's not directly, but through a party vote), should be right answer. – wrod Apr 04 '22 at 20:08
  • @wrod That was indeed also my interpretation, and the reason why I wrote this answer. – Opifex Apr 04 '22 at 20:41
  • In Canada, "minority governments", in which the governing party has a plurality but not a majority, are not uncommon. They usually operate through inter-party cooperation and informal agreements to support certain important measures ("confidence & supply") rather than formal coalitions. They also don't tend to last very long. – Michael Seifert Apr 04 '22 at 22:01
  • @wrod - be aware that your glossing of "the executive branch" as "the government" is specific to British English. In American English (where "the government" includes the judiciary and the legislature) it is flat out wrong. The BrE equivalent of AmE "the government" would be "the state". – Martin Bonner supports Monica Apr 07 '22 at 08:56
  • @MartinBonnersupportsMonica well, of course, I am aware of it. That's why I put it in quotes. British "government" doesn't include all functions of the state performing the work of governing. Even "state" doesn't really have the same meaning in BrE as "government" in the US. Although it may be close. – wrod Apr 07 '22 at 18:41
5

Switzerland qualifies for the "more": While the "President" is a collegium of seven members from different parties, it comes closest to what you would consider a President. It is also not directly elected by the people, and so there is no "presidential debate", however there are many political debates in Switzerland on elections and on initiatives/referenda in the public space, the answer goes for these political discussions; interpreting the question more broadly as "political discussion languages".

They speak usually (Swiss as well as High) German and French, sometimes even Italian (as Switzerland has four national languages, of which three are official). The large part of the population is only native in one of the three (to be precise, Swiss and High German are quite similar, yet different languages but usually counted as "one") and learns in school (and when working within the government or in general across the country) to speak at least one of the others too, sometimes three.

The spoken language in therefore often a mixture or both, or on of them, which is often the case in parliamentary debates, press-conferences and similar

Mayou36
  • 260
  • 1
  • 7
  • 1
    Four national languages, three official ones ;p In any case, Swiss population essentially has zero direct say in who becomes a Federal Councillor and debates between national figures for electoral purposes are rare. – xngtng Apr 06 '22 at 17:27
  • 1
    @xngtng this is true, taking the "President" directly, such a thing does not even exist, neither the elections nor the "presidential debates". I adjusted the answer to reflect that and keep it, directed to a broader question about "political language" - from the OP the "exact" political occasion seemed rather irrelevant, but you are absolutely right, thanks! – Mayou36 Apr 06 '22 at 20:36
  • You might also mention that parliamentary debates are multi-lingual, as are official press conferences by the federal government. But yes, since each language has their own media channels, televised debates are usually in that language. – meriton Apr 07 '22 at 02:14
4

The US. Kind of.

An edge case, but the 2019 Democratic primary elections for US president, several of the candidates spoke partially in Spanish during the debate. Whether this trend will continue remains to be seen (especially considering they got roasted pretty heavily for it, as it was seen as a publicity stunt).

user3067860
  • 1,239
  • 7
  • 13
  • 4
    I am not sure, but it's possible George W. Bush or Jeb Bush might have inserted a bit of Spanish into an earlier debate as well, (they both have used Spanish during campaigning and other political activities), and there's this little exchange – uhoh Apr 04 '22 at 20:51
4

Taiwan

Candidates speak both Mandarin and Hokkien.

Example: In the 2023-12-30 Presidential Debate (YouTube),

  • Lai Ching-te spoke mostly in Mandarin with occasional slips into Hokkien.
  • Ko Wen-je spoke mostly in Mandarin with occasional slips into Hokkien. Notably, in the opening 8-minute address, he ends the last 10 seconds of his time in Hokkien (this seemed clearly planned).
  • Hou Yu-ih spoke mostly in Hokkien with occasional slips into Mandarin.

At the start, each of the three candidates also greeted the audience in Hakka. But I didn't notice any use of Hakka afterwards. (Tsai Ing-Wen, President 2016–24, is Hakka but I don't think she used any Hakka during her official debates in 2015/16 and 2019/20 beyond perhaps some greetings.)

Note: Hou was the KMT candidate. The KMT is the most pro-China party and Hou's use of Hokkien was part of their strategy. South China Morning Post (2024):

During campaign rallies and televised speeches, Hou has made a point of playing up his local roots by speaking his Hokkien language, a dialect that his family has used since long before the KMT arrived on the island in 1949.

The decision to communicate in his native language, which is spoken by one-third of Taiwanese, was a tactic to help consolidate support from older people and swing voters, according to a KMT campaign worker.

More context from Reuters: "Speaking the tricky language of elections in Taiwan" (2011).

Languages spoken by Taiwanese permanent residents aged at least 6 (November 2020 Census):

enter image description here

enter image description here

Hokkien is sometimes also called (1) Minnan or (2) "Taiwanese", but these are misnomers because (1) Minnan is a group of languages (of which Hokkien is merely one) and (2) calling Hokkien "Taiwanese" is like calling the English language "American".

user103496
  • 5,530
  • 20
  • 36
1

Besides Spanish, Spain has five other co-official languages (though official use is limited to their region): Aranese, Basque, Catalan, Galician and Valencian.

Due in part to the increased presence of regionalist/nationalist parties in the Congress (compared to 30 years ago), and despite it not being explicitly allowed by the rules, it is not uncommon to hear some bits of Basque, Catalan or Galician in parliamentary debates.

walen
  • 440
  • 4
  • 11