After 540 days of negotiations, Belgium finally chose a government last week, just in time to help it address its mounting economic concerns. The leader to emerge from over a year of negotiations is 60-year-old Socialist Elio Di Rupo, a Wallonian chemist who is also Belgium's first openly gay prime minister. The bowtie-wearing son of poor Italian immigrants, Di Rupo has had a long political career, and is known in the country as the "regent of the kingdom" because of his role in bridging the gap between Belgium's culturally diverse regions. The first French-speaking prime minister in nearly 40 years, Di Rupo's rise has highlighted Belgium's linguistic divides (the country has three official languages -- Dutch, French, and German -- with the majority speaking Dutch). Right out of the gate, Di Rupo faced questions about his Dutch after he botched an interview with a reporter due to language barriers. Di Rupo assures supporters that he will "speak Dutch to parliament" and will seek to improve his language skills in the coming days.
Di Rupo isn't the only leader to confront linguistic challenges on the path to power. Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien did not know a single word of English when he left Francophone Quebec in 1967 to enter the halls of English-speaking Ottawa. More recently, former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who was born in Saudi Arabia and educated in French schools, had his linguistic baptism-by-fire during a mangled speech in Arabic in front of the Lebanese parliament. As for the United States, the last President not to have spoken English as their first language was Martin Van Buren in 1837 (he spoke Dutch).
While many world leaders are well-versed in several languages (Portugal's Jose Manuel Barroso and Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, for starters) there are, of course, others who have faced the daunting task of governing while taking a crash course in the native tongue. Here are a few leaders who have trouble talking the talk.

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