Rep. Julia Carson (D-Ind.): “I do sign language. I grew up in my very young years next door to a girl who was deaf, and so I learned quite a bit from her. I can do a lot of it.”

Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa): “Latham speaks Spanish, but very little,” says his spokesman, James Carstensen, explaining that his boss is part of a group of lawmakers who took Spanish classes two years ago. “I wouldn’t put him in the middle of Mexico without a translator.”

Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa): Some Russian. He was a Foreign Service office after college and became fairly fluent. “It has faded with age,” said Leach spokesman Gregory Wierzynski.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.): “Indonesian and a little Spanish.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.): “A little bit of French and German.”

Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.): “My parents came to the U.S. from Greece, so I speak some Greek.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah): “Just English.”

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.): He says he’s fluent in Spanish and understands some French.

Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio): Fluent in Farsi. “He lived in Iran in the late 1970s, right before the overthrow of the Shah,” said Ney spokesman Brian Walsh.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.): The word from his press office is that he has been taking Spanish classes for the past two years.