Lewis Ferguson speaking Italiano ??

[Big Ramy 1314]

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CcfK2mrBA/

Is this AI, or a wind up, or does he actually speak Italian?? Impressed ! 😂🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[AAAfather]

I've seen him speak Italian before.  He's fluent.

Remember he's skippered Bologna a lot - needs to have mastered the lingo to do that  

Edited April 9 by AAAfather

[fringo]

Yeah he went full on to integrate when he moved to Italy. Wouldn't have been made captain without it IMO. very impressive how he settled so quickly and then made captain.  Especially so as he was pretty young as well.

[Grim Jim]

Credit to him.  Anybody remember years ago some Scottish TV version of A Question of Sport or whatever, had two of our footballers on the panel who played in Germany?

Murdo MacLeod demonstrated at length his fluency in German, but Rambo McInally got a laugh struggling with ja/nein.

I feel for folk who do struggle with a language when they have to fit in there, as I just scraped my French O-level.   You know what it's like, locals abroad just speak English to me before I open my mouth (while I'm trying to remember how to ask for 2 beers).

Off topic, but...

When I say scrape that O-level, we had brand new tech for language classes.   You had to speak in French into a mic while a teacher may or may not have been listening in.   That freaked me out!   I had no bother reading French aloud in a class, but broke out in a sweat in that language lab.

2nd time I used the fekker was in the exam.   You had to create a narative for a storyboard and following the bland comic strip, I mumbled away about Jacques getting on a bus and Jacques going into town or whatever, then half way through noticed Jacques had tits...   Couldn't think of another word to say after that, so I'm still chuffed scraping that C 🫣

[ceudmilefailte]

There’s a striker at hull who spent six months in la Liga and managed to become fluent in Spanish. 

[fringo]

31 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

There’s a striker at hull who spent six months in la Liga and managed to become fluent in Spanish. 

Was he not Spanish?

 

Only joking. 😁

[Squirrelhumper]

10 hours ago, ceudmilefailte said:

There’s a striker at hull who spent six months in la Liga and managed to become fluent in Spanish. 

There's also a defender in Zagreb who did likewise. 

[DoonTheSlope]

It’s really not anything to write home about. Do you think there’s countless threads on fans message boards across the world about their players who play in Scotland being able to speak English?

If anything it’s a sad indictment of the Scottish education system and Scottish mentality that more people aren’t inclined to learn a second language 

If he’s moving to a different country then learning the language should be the very least he should be doing 

[ceudmilefailte]

23 minutes ago, DoonTheSlope said:

It’s really not anything to write home about. Do you think there’s countless threads on fans message boards across the world about their players who play in Scotland being able to speak English?

If anything it’s a sad indictment of the Scottish education system and Scottish mentality that more people aren’t inclined to learn a second language 

If he’s moving to a different country then learning the language should be the very least he should be doing 

English is my second language 

[Orraloon]

5 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

English is my second language 

Me too.

[ger intae them]

Meenaw

[Yosemite Sam]

8 hours ago, DoonTheSlope said:

It’s really not anything to write home about. Do you think there’s countless threads on fans message boards across the world about their players who play in Scotland being able to speak English?

If anything it’s a sad indictment of the Scottish education system and Scottish mentality that more people aren’t inclined to learn a second language 

If he’s moving to a different country then learning the language should be the very least he should be doing 

Not just a British thing though, most English speaking countries are less inclined to learn other languages, Australians, Americans, etal. English is the go to language so non English speaking countries naturally gravitate towards that, with English speaking countries it's like, which language do I pick? The incentive just isn't as strong, nothing to do with us 'being lazy' as is the tired old trope.

[AAAfather]

I'm crap at foreign languages, but the Scottish school-based way of learning them is/was useless.  Go to the country and live there for a while.  Survive at first and then thrive.  The brain works best when heavily motivated. 

 

Speaking to the supermarket worker finds you your favourite foods. 

Speaking with the local transport worker allows you to get full value for a local travelcard. 

See the pretty local girls in a bar and realise if you can't talk to them you wont get very far. 

 

This is how humans learn languages quickly.  And I'm sure Lewis Ferguson can afford an excellent tutor to also help. 

[Toepoke]

On 4/9/2026 at 8:20 PM, Big Ramy 1314 said:

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CcfK2mrBA/

Is this AI, or a wind up, or does he actually speak Italian?? Impressed ! 😂🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

His Italian is better than his dad's English 🤣

[Barney Rubble]

13 hours ago, DoonTheSlope said:

It’s really not anything to write home about. Do you think there’s countless threads on fans message boards across the world about their players who play in Scotland being able to speak English?

If anything it’s a sad indictment of the Scottish education system and Scottish mentality that more people aren’t inclined to learn a second language 

If he’s moving to a different country then learning the language should be the very least he should be doing 

This in spades.

Well said.

[Barney Rubble]

22 minutes ago, Toepoke said:

His Italian is better than his dad's English 🤣

Derek Ferguson was on co-comms on BBC Alba for the recent Torino v Bologna game and said as much himself when Lewis came on as a sub late in the game.

'Here comes the most articulate of the Fergusons.'

A mouthful of Fierce Iron Brew went all over the carpet following that comment.

Edited April 10 by Barney Rubble

[AAAfather]

4 hours ago, Yosemite Sam said:

Not just a British thing though, most English speaking countries are less inclined to learn other languages, Australians, Americans, etal. English is the go to language so non English speaking countries naturally gravitate towards that, with English speaking countries it's like, which language do I pick? The incentive just isn't as strong, nothing to do with us 'being lazy' as is the tired old trope.

The problem is which language to learn if English is your native language?  The obvious global language to learn to cover all bases is English (world language dominant in western movies, aviation, publishing, science, the internet, politics etc).

German and French are not spoken in that many countries.   Spanish maybe with Latin America.  The smart answer for late 21st century is probably Mandarin.   But that is just too left-field if growing up in Scotland. 

 

[Barney Rubble]

1 minute ago, AAAfather said:

The problem is which language to learn if English is your native language?  The obvious global language to learn to cover all bases is English (world language dominant in western movies, aviation, publishing, science, the internet, politics etc).

German and French are not spoken in that many countries.   Spanish maybe with Latin America.  The smart answer for late 21st century is probably Mandarin.   But that is just too left-field if growing up in Scotland. 

 

Spanish is generally accepted as being spoken more widely than English.

English is - as you suggest - as the default global language because of international media which is largely influenced by the US.

Even in the EU institutions, English only overtook French as the default language in the mid 90s following the accession of Finland, Sweden and Austria.

 

[Big Ramy 1314]

Wonder how wee Billy Gilmour is with his Italian ? I think it's great Ferguson can speak Italian well.. I can imagine Souness back in his Sampdoria days !!!  " YOUA FUCKAOFA, I BREAKA YOU a LEGA " 😂😂😂

[DoonTheSlope]

@ceudmilefailte and @Orraloon

Answers on a postcard as to who’s who though

 

[Hertsscot]

On 4/10/2026 at 10:03 AM, DoonTheSlope said:

If anything it’s a sad indictment of the Scottish education system and Scottish mentality that more people aren’t inclined to learn a second language 

If he’s moving to a different country then learning the language should be the very least he should be doing 

It's daft to blame this on the Scottish education system and Scottish mentality, as if it were solely a Scottish phenomenon. Having taught in both England and N.Ireland I can assure you that's certainly not the case!

It's also misleading to attribute failure to speak a second language to laziness, as there are some very specific reasons why non-native speakers of English have more opportunities and greater incentives to learn the language.

English is the second language of many people around the world and English language films, music etc have been widely available for years. I've just come back from Austria and witnessed a French couple speaking to the Austrian waitress in English as it was the common language between them - and that's something I'm sure is quite common.

[DoonTheSlope]

The obsession on here with people comparing ourselves with England is hilariously weird. Whatever floats your boat though I suppose

It should be drummed into pupils that learning a second language is not only beneficial in terms of opportunities but also beneficial in a mental health well being type thing to give you a sense of pride and achievement 

There’s nothing quite like being in a foreign country and using the local language in a shop, bar or hotel etc to give you a spring in your step and a sense of accomplishment

Theres not much I wish I’d done differently but if I had the chance to go back to school I’d sure as fuck stick in at French then I’d have had the opportunity to learn other languages

This should come from the top from the Scottish government and works its way down the pyramid to the pupils

[Hertsscot]

1 hour ago, DoonTheSlope said:

The obsession on here with people comparing ourselves with England is hilariously weird. Whatever floats your boat though I suppose.

I think it's also fair to say that there are some posters here who equally seem to have a weird obsession with running down Scotland at every possible opportunity.

The point is that anyone in the UK due to unique set of circumstances, including a history of British colonialism and American cultural imperialism have not got the same incentive or need to become fluent in a foreign language. With the development of AI that needs becomes less each year, why bother with the hard work of learning when Google translate can read the book or paper or menu for you?

Having said that I do agree with you that learning languages is important and the very least managing to say please and thank you is a common courtesy.

If you did return to school today, I'm sure you'd  find it aot easier to learn a language. In all my five decades of teaching no subject has undergone such a change in teaching and learning as Languages and a time trying to learn today is in a much better position they would have been when I was at school.

 

[DoonTheSlope]

8 hours ago, Hertsscot said:

With the development of AI that needs becomes less each year, why bother with the hard work of learning when Google translate can read the book or paper or menu for you?

Get in the bin with this AI pish. You want to talk about laziness then AI is a lazy bastards wet dream when humanity is redundant 

Calculators and encyclopaedias have been around for decades yet children are quite rightly expected to work out sums and research passages for themselves. We were when I was at school anyway 

It makes you wonder why we bother learning or trying to achieve anything at all. It’s pointless because we’re going to die anyway so what the point?

8 hours ago, Hertsscot said:

Having said that I do agree with you that learning languages is important and the very least managing to say please and thank you is a common courtesy.

Simple pleasantries should be a given. There’s no better feeling than walking out of an establishment or getting out of a taxi having had a ‘conversation’ in the local tongue. The appreciation by the person you were conversing with is always warmly received too

[Hertsscot]

21 minutes ago, DoonTheSlope said:

Get in the bin with this AI pish. You want to talk about laziness then AI is a lazy bastards wet dream when humanity is redundant 

Calculators and encyclopaedias have been around for decades yet children are quite rightly expected to work out sums and research passages for themselves. We were when I was at school anyway 

It makes you wonder why we bother learning or trying to achieve anything at all. It’s pointless because we’re going to die anyway so what the point?

Simple pleasantries should be a given. There’s no better feeling than walking out of an establishment or getting out of a taxi having had a ‘conversation’ in the local tongue. The appreciation by the person you were conversing with is always warmly received too

I've covered maths lessons and I am regularly amazed at how quickly pupils want to resort to getting out a calculator to work out what I think are fairly simple sums. I generally don't let them, for the reasons you mentioned.

I think most pupils, like most adults, want to do things as quickly and easily as possible. AI is a mixed bag. Yes, I'm sure it is for many a shortcut to get tasks done (and learn nothing in the process) but there can be times when it's a very valuable tool.

Anyhow, I'm conscious that this is the football thread rather than general topics. Happy to continue the conversation elsewhere. But well done to Lewis for his Italiano.

Ben fatto!