Discussion of the “arm wrestling” between Switzerland and the US, interview with US Ambassador to Switzerland. The video is in French, and you can use the links on the right under “Les séquences de l’émission” (they all start with “Wegelin”) to jump to the parts you want: Mise au Point
“We’re not trying to balance the deficit on the backs of Swiss banks”- US Ambassador to Switzerland
Quite right – He wants to do it on the backs of US expats!
The company I worked sent me to work in Switzerland for roughly 3 weeks. already fluent in French, I acquired a small 100 word german vocabulary to as a minimum initiate a conversation then switch to French. What arrogance for an ambassador not to learn at least one of the Swiss official languages.
@rivka88
Quite right – I believe that the US Ambassador to Belgium also does not speak French (or Dutch)! This is a scandal. Maybe every EU country should send ambassadors to the US who only speak French, German, Italian etc? It is absolutely unacceptable to send an ambassador who does not speak the host nation’s language.
@Rivka: From Foreign Services Institute French cassette tapes, “J’aimerais une bonne aimante s’occuper d’enfants” (I learned my French from FSI) — the French courses were really for the wives of diplomats to be able to get adequate domestic servants.
@Peter – I got my first major “breakthrough” with the FSI Portuguese. I love those books! Later on I took courses for Brazilians, and that helped a lot!
The FSI methodology is my favourite!
@Petros & geeez
The FSI tapes are excellent and also well known here in the EU. I used the Spanish tapes on the Basic Course with good results. All of these courses are in the public domain and freely accessible for anyone who didn’t know by the way. Here is a link to the hosting website which has digitised all of the tapes and pdfs:
http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php
I’ve listened to the German and French courses briefly out of curiosity – They seem like they would bring you to a good level!