While visiting an audience at Beijing's Tsinghua University on Thursday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spent 30 minutes speaking in Chinese -- a language he's been studying for several years. He's not the only well-known person who's fluent in something besides English. Here are some other examples:
Sandra Bullock was born in Virginia but raised in Germany, the homeland of her opera-singer mother. She's fluent in German, as can be seen here.
The Boston-born, Maryland-raised Edward Norton spent some time in Japan after graduating from Yale. He worked for a foundation created by his grandfather, real-estate developer James Rouse. He says his Japanese is rusty but he can still speak it.
"Gossip Girl" star Leighton Meester is a capable French speaker, and broke out a few phrases in an interview.
Oscar winner Natalie Portman was born in Israel and is a dual citizen of the U.S. and her native land. She can speak a number of languages, including Hebrew, German and French.
"The Ballad of Jack and Rose" actress Camilla Belle grew up in a bilingual household, thanks to her Brazilian mother, and can speak fluent Portuguese.
Ben Affleck learned Spanish while living in Mexico and still draws upon the language, as he did when being interviewed about "Argo."
Bradley Cooper speaks fluent French, which he learned as a student attending Georgetown and then spending six months in France. The Internet loves it when he conducts interviews in the language.
NBA star Kobe Bryant grew up in Italy, where his father was a player. He can still speak the language.
Renee Zellweger's father is from Switzerland, and she knows how to speak German.
Leonardo DiCaprio grew up in Los Angeles but his mother is German. He has family in Germany as well and is capable of a bit of Deutsch.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt loves French culture and knows how to communicate in the language.
Though raised in London, singer Rita Ora was born in Kosovo and has Albanian heritage.
Jack Black has taught himself both French and Spanish. One thing that helps: watching films in their original languages.
- Mark Zuckerberg makes headlines for addressing China event in Chinese
- Many made fun of him, but others admired the attempt
- Facebook's founder is one of many native English speakers who can talk in another tongue
(CNN) -- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg already owns a good chunk of the Internet, but on Wednesday he won it as well when he spoke Chinese to an audience at a Beijing university.
Media, including CNN stablemate CNNMoney, lit up -- sometimes snarkily.
"Mark Zuckerberg addresses Chinese university in fluent mandarin," the UK Guardian observed.
"Zuckerberg's Chinese speech gets mixed reviews," sniffed the BBC.
Zuckerberg's surprise has crowd gasping
"Zuckerberg, in all-Chinese Q&A, says Facebook has '11 mobile users'," headlined CNNMoney.
Some commenters ripped into Zuckerberg. Others admired the fact that he's been learning a complex language while most of us are snoozing in front of YouTube.
Zuckerberg is far from the only well-known person to speak multiple languages. Certainly performers born in non-English-speaking countries have often found it necessary to learn English to make it in America. But there are also plenty of Americans (and Brits!) who have versed themselves in other tongues.
Check out the gallery for some examples.
