Foreign Office beefs up diplomats’ language training (Anna Codrea-Rado, The Guardian)

Language centre provides a permanent location where staff undergo intensive training to prepare for overseas postings.

‘The language school is a microcosm of what our vision is for the Foreign Office as a whole: a centre of ideas, not an island of administration.’ William Hague opens the Foreign Office’s new language centre. Photograph: Guardian.

In early January, Anna Bradbury will fly out to Beijing to head up the press and communications team of the Foreign Office’s China network. She didn’t speak Mandarin when she got the job, and to call her a linguist would be a stretch.

But as her departure date draws closer, her Mandarin is going from strengthen to strength, thanks to a Foreign and Commonwealth Office language training programme, which is picking up where the UK’s education system stops.

Polyglots and insults: how our European leaders use language (Lucy Ward, The Guardian)

To mark the European Day of Languages we examine how political leaders speak – both at home and abroad.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of Russia

Putin once invited a journalist questioning Russia’s tactics in Chechnya to come to Moscow “to be circumcised” and join the rebels. Photograph: YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images.

Native tongue: Renowned for his salty vocabulary, rather clipped delivery and uncompromising asides. Unafraid to employ earthy Russian street argot, he once threatened to wipe out Chechen rebels “in the shithouse”, and on another occasion – to press conference gasps and giggles – invited a journalist questioning Russia’s tactics in Chechnya to come to Moscow “to be circumcised” and join the rebels.