Mr Putin said family members speak fluent Chinese.

Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed on September 2 that young members of his family can speak fluent Chinese, and advised schoolchildren in Tuva not to forget the importance of English despite the growing popularity of Chinese.

Mr Putin has two daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila, Maria and Katerina. The girls speak Russian, English, German and French. According to Russian media, Mr Putin, who divorced his wife in 2014, rarely talks about his family, but has at least three grandchildren.

“Some members of my family, the children, also speak Chinese – they speak it fluently,” President Putin told students of Secondary School No. 20 in Kyzyl, Tuva Republic, some 4,500 km east of Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin talks to students during the "Talking about important things" lesson as he visits Secondary School No. 20 in Kyzyl, Republic of Tuva, September 2, 2024. Photo: Kremlin.ru

Amid the growing partnership between China and Russia, Chinese is becoming increasingly popular across Russia as a foreign language of choice, a trend that Putin said was due to growing ties in the economic, political and social spheres.

Mr Putin, who speaks fluent German but has also studied to improve his English, said students should not forget the importance of English.

"English is a wonderful language, it has brought humanity a lot of benefits in terms of combining knowledge and uniting people in the cultural sphere…", Mr. Putin said.

According to the 2022 census, Russian, English, Tatar, German, and Chechen are the most widely spoken languages ​​in Russia. Although Chinese is much less widely spoken, it has rapidly gained popularity as a foreign language in recent years.

In May 2024, Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged a "new era" of partnership between Moscow and Beijing.

In February 2022, China and Russia declared an “unlimited” partnership when Mr Putin visited Beijing, just weeks before Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine.

According to Ethnologue, a language research center, English is the most widely spoken language in the world with about 1.5 billion speakers, followed by Chinese with about 1.1 billion speakers, and then Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, French, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, and Urdu.

Minh Duc (According to Asia One)

Source: https://www.nguoiduatin.vn/ong-putin-noi-thanh-vien-trong-gia-dinh-noi-tieng-trung-luu-loat-20424090309521192.htm