To properly represent his status within the royal court, he'd have at least one assistant. Even if he could speak their language perfectly it wouldn't be proper to address them directly, more "proper" to speak through an interpreter.
This is a characteristic that carries through to this day, typically with politicians or representatives of nations as in the UN. There is a famous scene in history when an American ambassador asks a soviet representative not to wait for a translation since he knew he understood English perfectly well (I believe it was during the Cuban missile crisis).
Back to the 13th Warrior. Once he'd left his home, Ahmed realised he'd nobody to talk to and was left in the dark; he had to learn their language. This is something people can do within the time frame of the film pretty easily. The most common words in English are the, a, etc. Finding their equivalence is fairly straightforward, then you look toward nouns then adjectives, e.g. "the something is something" later becomes "the weather is cold" or whatever.
In the film, by the time he reaches the north-men's land, he knows enough to get by, but often has to have new words explained.
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ixtrm-sol
12 years ago
plus he was supposed to be a royalty and poet, he's already good with language and must've some experiences with other cultures/languages given his position in the court. the middle east was a flourishing cultural, intellectual and trade hub sitting right between europe and asia, it was not the intellectual wasteland like now.
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garthfan0523
10 years ago
The story you relate with the ambassador and the Russian representative was also played up in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country when Chang (Christopher Plummer) is interrogating Captain Kirk.
CHANG: Indeed the record shows that Captain Kirk once held the rank of Admiral and that Admiral Kirk was demoted for taking matters into his own hands in defiance of regulations and the law. Do you deny you were demoted for these charges, Captain? Don't wait for the translation. Answer me now!
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mrcheminee
9 years ago
Not all languages have words for 'the' and 'a'. Latin for example can have whole sentences made out of just one single word each. Arabic also has a lot of different rules.
What you're saying is only true in case of languages from the same group. For Dutch people it can be quite easy to learn German, for Italians, Spanish is not too hard and people from Czech Republic don't have much difficulties learning Polish.
But Arabic and Old Norse are different in too many ways. The only way Banderas' character would be able to learn the languages as quick as he did is if he basicly already knew the language and just needed to get used to the dialect.
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