• Sarah Palin, the Alaskan 'Barracuda' and former Governor
of Alaska, does not speak any foreign language, did not own a
passport until 2006 and has never lived abroad.

• In 2006, she had obtained a passport to visit members of
the Alaska National Guard who were stationed for fifteen months
in Northern Kuwait, and that was the first time Palin ever got to
travel outside North America.

• Her folksy Alaskan tone in speech has invited several
comments on its unusualness and out-of-the-ordinary accent heard
among natives of Wisconsin, Idaho and Canada.

• Palin actually has an Alaskan accent that is attributed
to the Matnuska and Susitna region, which is exactly where young
Palin was brought up in her hometown of Wasilla.

• The dialect spoke by the people of Alaska is quite
unusual thanks to the diversity of inhabitants who came and
settled in this land from far off places.

• In many ways, Alaskan English has a tiny amount of
"Canadian raising" in it. Many residents of Alaska originally
came from the Pacific Northwest or Western Canada and features of
the dialects of these regions are most prominent in Alaskan
English. Immigrants to Alaska from the Midwest have also
contributed unique elements to the Alaskan speech.

• Although Sarah Palin has limited linguistic skills, "She
clearly has a very canny ability to connect with people. What she
says. How she says it. And her body language," said former Alaska
Governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat whom Palin defeated in 2006.
		

• Apart from English, Obama speaks, 'Indonesian and a
little Spanish' as told to The Hill in 2006. He has confided that
his 'German is not real good.'

• Barack Obama, the son of a Kenya-born Harvard-educated
economist and an American anthropologist, was brave enough to
admit his handicap in not being able to speak a foreign
language.

• "I don't speak a foreign language. It's embarrassing!"
were his words at a town hall meeting in Powder Spring, Georgia
on July 11, 2008.

• He is reported to have an average grasp of the
Indonesian language as a result of the four years he spent at
local schools in Jakarta.

• However, despite having a multi-national family tree and
being brought up in a diverse cultural climate, Obama lacks a
proficient grasp of any foreign languages.

• Though he himself could not be bilingual, this global
leader of the free world is of the firm opinion that in America
"we should have every child speaking more than one language" and
emphasized the need for foreign language study in America's
classrooms.

• Obama's embarrassment over Americans not knowing more
foreign languages prompted a few outrages from conservative
groups who argued that the President?s comments meant Americans
should be forced to learn Spanish.

• Obama's heightened faculty as a writer par excellence in
the English language stands him in good stead among his
supporters.