Jamby knows how to speak in Portugese, French, and other tongues

Senator Jamby Madrigal will be a great speaker for the country, especially with non-English speaking countries of the first world.

Here's an excerpt from the column of Rina Jimenez David.

AT ONE point during the meeting between visiting East Timorese parliamentarians and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Sen. Jamby Madrigal, Madrigal addressed the visitors directly and began to speak in fluent, flawless Portuguese.

The visitors all smiled and were visibly pleased that one of our legislators could converse in one of their national languages (the other is Tetum, also Tetun, the indigenous language). Filipinos in the room initially thought that Madrigal was speaking in Spanish, which for Filipinos of her background and origins was not so unusual. But it soon became evident that she was speaking the language of East Timor’s former colonial power.

It turns out that Madrigal had lived for some years in Portugal as a young woman, training in dressage (competitive horse training and riding) and there had mastered the language.

The Senate President took the chance to vent his feelings of frustration that “the Filipinos chose to give up on Spanish,” adding that if we had only persisted in studying and mastering this foreign tongue, then Filipinos would have been integrated into the Spanish-speaking world, with which we share many common qualities especially our religious roots.