Nick Clegg speaking foreign/Westerwelle beeindruckt

I linked earlier to a clip of Nick Clegg speaking Dutch.

Recently the Guardian had an article about all the foreign languages he claims to speak.

His Spanish apparently had its limits:

Trouble came later at question time. Sitting without earphones on – and so without access to the translators – he showed good comprehension but occasionally struggled to understand the precise wording of questions. Clegg himself admitted that his unrehearsed Spanish – despite the practice he gets on frequent trips to his wife’s family home in Olmedo, Valladolid, north-west of Madrid – might not be perfect.

Clegg also spoke German in Berlin. As berlin brief put it:

In the press conference following the meeting on 10 June 2010, the LibDem leader Nick Clegg surprised journalists with his fluent German, raving about the “Berliner Luft” (”Berlin air”).

“I’d like the English journalists to know … his German is excellent”, Foreign Minister Westerwelle commented, the Guardian newspaper reported, perhaps alluding to the generally poor language abilities of English journalists, and to Coomarasamy insisting on framing his questions in English in the press conference in Berlin last year.

Possibly his fluent Dutch helps with the German. But I think we need to hear him. Westerwelle is bound to make a remark to British journalists in view of his record.

LATER NOTE: Kalebeul in more detail and with a video on Clegg’s Spanish.

Thanks to our Spanish correspondent, who will be reporting on Clegg’s Catalonian.

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