English Chess Forum

A couple of days ago I saw a tweet from Doug Griffin's highly recomendable Twitter account which carries an excerpt from the new Quality Chess book, Mark Taimanov's I Was A Victim Of Bobby Fischer. The passage, which features a discussion (held after the 1971 Vancouver match) involving Taimanov, Fischer and Vasiukov, is intended to display Fischer's extraordinary memory for chess games, which it surely succeeds in doing. But what caught my eye was the following aside (brackets in original):

(Interestingly, we communicated in the Serbian language, the only one that was known to us both.)

Interestingly indeed, since the first thing that occurred to me was: oh, I didn't know Fischer spoke Serbian. Then, some time later, it also occurred to me: hang on, I thought Fischer knew Russian. Presumably I was uninformed on the first point and wrong on the second - or at least, if he had some knowledge of Russian it was not enough to hold a conversation in that language. (Of course there are all kinds of levels of foreign-language comprehension and it wouldn't be unusual for somebody to be able to read a language to a reasonable standard but have much less ability to speak it or to understand it spoken.)

So I wonder - what knowledge did Fischer have of Russian? Was his Serbian fluent and when did he learn it? How good was his Spanish? (The clip is not really long enough for me to judge: I am sure there is an anecdote somewhere about him translating from a radio broadcast, but I can't quite place iot right now.) Do we have any concrete evidence that he had other languages beyond these?

I thought that Bobby only knew one word of Serbian: privi.

Ha, yes, well remembered. But that was when he was what, fifteen?

Bobby's knowledge of Russian was from reading magazines. I doubt he was fluent in spoken Russian.

I also doubt he was fluent in Spanish - what cause would he have had to learn it? He probably picked up a few words in Mar del Plata, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Havana.

In all the books I've read about him over the years, I don't remember anyone saying he spoke Russian. It doesn't mean that he didn't, and perhaps he had some understanding of it in written form as he must have come across enough of their magazines but I've never heard Spassky or anyone else, for that matter, mention Fischer embrace any aspect of their culture let alone speak their lingo. He didn't seem to like or trust them very much, so it seems quite unlikely he made the effort to speak to them in their own language.

I am vaguely hoping for historical evidence here as opposed to what people reckon was "likely".

Not for the first time, Justin (as when I opined that Bobby was a genius), you may be stuck with our impressions. History is not an exact science.

I imagine that Bobby learned a bit of Spanish at Brooklyn High. I doubt he was interested in it, unless he subscribed to a decent magazine on 'ajedrez'.

His memory was prodigious, so learning the written word would have been easy for him.

I couldn't tell from your clip how good his Spanish was. For all I know, he might have acquired some Icelandic in his final years.

Impressions, impressions. It may be all we are left with, unless someone can produce a clip as good as the one of Alekhine speaking his excellent French.

I think what Justin is getting at is asking people to try and be more precise when they might be quoting a source, or remembering where they read something, as then he (or others) can go and look it up (and dig around a bit further). That is how progress is made in a well-referenced and sourced topic area.

On history as an exact science (or at least an empirical approach), see concepts such as historicism and the works of Leopold von Ranke.

The people who actually met Bobby might have the firmest idea.

Stewart and Leonard for starters.

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:18 am

I think what Justin is getting at is asking people to try and be more precise when they might be quoting a source, or remembering where they read something, as then he (or others) can go and look it up (and dig around a bit further). That is how progress is made in a well-referenced and sourced topic area.

And it is not as if nobody ever wrote about him: we're not starting from scratch here.

"For all I know, he might have acquired some Icelandic in his final years."

Only a small sample, but I think I only met one person who didn't speak English there!

Frank Brady's book Endgame has a number of references to Bobby's ability in languages other than English. Here's my summary after a quick look based on following up references in the index: His mother Regina was proficient in a number of languages including Spanish and Russian. After doing particularly badly in a Spanish test at school, Regina impressed on Bobby the importance of learning languages if he was going abroad to play in chess tournaments. After the exam fail she tutored him intensively in Spanish and he is said to have become fluent in Spanish. He found Russian harder going and she would translate prose passages from Russian chess texts for him. In 1971 his spoken Russian was probably not great but by the 1990s he seems to have made a greater effort to be proficient and he would converse with Olga Lilienthal in Russian.

Years ago I had an entertaining discussion regarding Fischer's reaction to Geller's early draw offer at Palma 1970 Interzonal. Bernard Cafferty got roped in but I don't think we resolved whether RJF rejected Efim Petrovich's offer by shouting 'Fisch Off' or words to that effect. Golombek wrote of this, but, try as I might, his account has eluded me in recent times. Nor would it answer the question. Going to a country would not have given Bobby an extended vocabulary in that tongue, but he'd have had a bit of Spanish easily enough, with or without help from his Mum. Anyway ...

James