As King Charles embarks on his first royal visit abroad as a monarch, you may be wondering, what languages does he speak?
King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla were greeted with military honors at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on March 29, as the new monarch attempts to re-set relations with Europe post-Brexit.
Let’s explore how many and which languages the King can speak.
What languages does King Charles speak?
King Charles speaks four languages to varying levels of fluency including English, French, German, and Welsh. As the King of England, English is of course his native tongue.
French has been taught in schools in England for centuries, including the schools that Charles attended. He learned French at school and appears to be fairly fluent. In 2017, he made a speech in French during Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa, Ontario.
King Charles also reportedly speaks some German and even partly gave a speech in German when he attended an Embassy event in Berlin in 2019. His father, the late Prince Philip was of German ancestry and spoke the language fluently.
Charles has given speeches in Welsh
If you have watched Netflix‘s The Crown, you may remember the episodes in season three where a young Charles, who was about to gain the title Prince of Wales, was sent to a Welsh boarding school in an anti-Royalist town. In the show, as well as in real life, he learned Welsh for an academic term in 1969.
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Speaking about his Welsh in the ITV documentary Charles: 50 years a Prince, he said: “I did my utmost to learn as much as I could but in a term, it’s quite difficult, and I’m not as brilliant a linguist as I’d like to be.”
However, he addressed the Senedd or Welsh parliament in Welsh as recently as September 2022.
He has a soft spot for Gaelic and other UK language dialects
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson once told The New York Times that Charles “has made no bones about the fact that he is in support of the native languages of Scotland and Wales.”
In 1991, King Charles, then Prince, reportedly learned some Gaelic so that he could read his children’s book, The Old Man Of Lochnagar, on a Scottish TV channel.
The monarch has also had all of his annual reports since 2005 translated into Gaelic.
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