Via Instapundit and Kaus, I read that Barack Obama couldn’t speak Spanish. But in 1997, he claimed to a reporter that he could speak a barely passable Spanish, one of four languages that he claimed varying abilities to speak:
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, April 26, 1997
LAWYER-LEGISLATOR BREATHES LIFE INTO THE DREAMS OF HIS FATHER
David Heckelman
"Living in Indonesia was a fascinating time," Obama said, "because it gave me a good sense of what the Third World was like and what an emerging nation goes through." He learned to speak the Indonesian language while living there.
"I also speak a barely passable Spanish, and sometimes a barely passable English," he said, having studied the Spanish language and English literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles and at Columbia University in New York.
"I have a smattering of Swahili," he added, "because my father was from Kenya." He said he had traveled to that country to learn more about his father, who had died in 1980 and whom he had not known very well.
I know that Obama is more fluent in English than most of us.
Does anyone know how fluent he is in his other three languages, especially Spanish?
BTW, yesterday my daughter saw one of the Obama girls with her summer class group having a snack at a UC ice cream shop.
Intellectually, he's pretty impressive, especially compared to the recent nominees--Bush, Kerry, McCain, and Gore. Gore did so poorly that he struggled and dropped out of Divinity School at Vanderbilt.
Obama Super English Fluency Link 2
Personally, I think Michelle Obama is kinda hot, but I'm sure there are people out there who would not regard being married to her as an advantage.
Which, of course, is one of the reasons why native English speakers' language ability in other languages is lower than non-native English speakers' abilities in English. Even if you do study another language, you will likely have much fewer opportunities to practice than people who learn as a second language the international language of commerce.
Pretty hard to be any serious sort of academic wihtout having at least studied three or four languages.
Why's that?
I'm not a particularly language-learning-prone person, and I have four (other than English)--two dead, plus barbaric French and taxicab-quality Japanese...
Congratulations (smug alert).
And many thanks to Constantin for pointing out that Obama reads his speeches. Obama is using camera tricks to deceive the American people into thinking he's speaking, when really he's reading stuff he wrote earlier!
Next you'll be telling me Obama's using other people's money to run his campaign! Scandalous!
The man's wife is an opportunist of the first rank. Like most black women, she would have jumped at the chance to marry a white man.
That depends on what sort of academic one is.
And, even if true, what of it? Is being an academic a qualification for president? Should every American be expected to be an academic?
I note that typical mono-lingual Americans can talk with a higher percentage of their countrymen than Euros can talk with their fellow Euros. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Americans are smarter because we arranged things so Bostonians could speak/understand Texican?
And McCain has made no secret of the fact that he graduated very near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy -- fifth from last, if I recall correctly. (In fact he made light of it in his commencement address to my class.) No doubt his low class rank was in part a function of his discipline problems. (He seems to have spent the better part of his four years on restriction.) Still, fifth from the bottom -- and that at a time when the service academies were, I think, less academically rigorous than today -- doesn't suggest a towering intellect.
Where I live, the local school board abolished monolingual Spanish education prior to 227. The public hearings on this were very revealing. One Mexican parent stated "We were here first and we spoke Spanish." The issue is not one of pedagogy or multilingualism, but one of nationality and reconquista.
Finally, if English-speaking children have to learn a second language, why does it always have to be Spanish? Why not Mandarin?
It's so sad that Michelle settled for Obama. I'm tempted to offer my services as a mariagable white man to her, as based on your evidence, I have no doubt she'd jump at the chance I'm offering her!
I know the only way I can judge someone's inteligence is if they've accomplished something big in politics in before. Crap like their speeches and teaching at Harvard are Red Herrings.
You need to leave a MARK on somethin' if you're gonna be a good president! I mean, Reagan totally left his mark on California before he became president, what with his War on Hippies.
He's not.
He isn't.
Paul A'Barge: Like most black women, she would have jumped at the chance to marry a white man. It's sad that only Sarcastro picked up on this fine piece of racial insight.
Beyond that, yeah, the people trying to make this into an "issue" seem almost laughably desperate. Can we start speaking of an "ODS" -- "Obama Derangement Syndrome" yet?
No, others picked up on it. It's just that some ideas are so stupid they don't deserve to be dignified with substantive responses. For once, Sarcastro's response is satisfactory.
George Bush speaks Spanish poorly, but with great confidence
Of course, most reporting comes from the mainstream media.
Now I know it's because they hadn't left a real mark on anything before being president!
Every smart person I know totally marks wherever they are, whenever they want!
Constantly distinguishing oneself is the ONLY measure of whether someone should be president. Policies, leadership qualities and charisma bedamned!
Actually, I just got back from France and met an elderly French woman who told me she preferred Hillary to Obama because Hillary spoke French well and Obama didn't. As to what you learn in fancy prep schools, you might want to ask Sen. McCain.
Apparently, Mr. Lindgren, you have not read "Dreams From My Father."
I mean, getting people to petition the government for redress of their grevences is a cinch. Cause people are never apathetic, and one party governments tend to be quite responsive to citizen's needs!
I would expect a man of any intelligence at all to clean up Chicago's South side. Instead, he indulged in silly little crap like getting asbesdos out of tenament housing and getting people into job training. And the voter drives!Could Obama have been more of a loser?
Real leaders make fat sacks of cash money from law firms, and then go on to make their mark in some cabinet position or in the Senate. Anything else is surely a sign of a total empty suit!
He lived in Indonesia until he was ten and must consider one of his languages an Indonesian one. He also, in some interview, recited the Arabic call to prayer.
Words matter!
what, exactly, is the point? at least the professorship argument -- dumb as it was -- was a dispute about a point of fact. here we have people trying to prove obama is a liar by attempting to prove that what he says is true. up is down, down is up, people.
good god, you people are idiots. (no, i'm not talking about you. but the rest of them.)
obama's languages would be a non-issue if Obama hadn't poo-poo'd on everyone who isn't multi-lingual. you know this. yet, you act smug and ignorant of where this is coming from. good for you. apparently you also have ODS - though of a different kind.
here you go-he got free cookies. they do manage to define terms. no long term progress, unfortunately. still have asbestos. still poor. I did your research for you.
Glad we've cleared this up.
astrangerwithcandy:
Yeah, I'm the deranged one. I mean, I wouldn't count myself as multilingual (my French is barely passable, although on this thread some might think I'm boasting). So, obviously, I "know" that Obama, in your phrase, "poo-poo'd on me." And yet I remain "smug and ignorant" of my true interests, what is an important issue this is, and Obama in genera! You really got me good and I'm going to re-evaluate everything now.
here's another good one form you, in terms of what a community organizer is and does. it seems to work out pretty well for the people like Davis, his former boss. for the poor schlubs, not so much.
I'm puzzled by the Kaus and Reynolds links that say he "can't speak Spanish." These appear to me to link to Abe Greenwald, who links to a WaPo Dana Milbank opinion column in which Milbank simply asserts that Obama doesn't speak Spanish. Is there some evidence for this that I'm not seeing?
Also: I'm continually amazed by folks who are so partisan, sure of themselves, and lacking in research skills as to not understand that being magna cum laude (top 10% of the class) at Harvard Law School is something that only very smart people accomplish. Many classes are blind-graded. It's hard to do well at HLS. There is no special scale for African Americans once they get into law school. Obama excelled there.
I and probably most of Obama's critics do not disagree that he is very intelligent. But someone who is intelligent may have a vision for the U.S. that is not in the nation's best interests. In Obama's case, his answer to the bilingual education question again illustrates that his vision of the U.S. is as a multicultural society with less emphasis on assimilation. Obama's continued critcisms of Ward Connerly's anti-preference initiatives, and calls for higher taxes illustrate that he believes in redistribution not just on economic lines but on racial ones also.
Criticizing him for his views does not mean I doubt his intelligence, just that I greatly disagree with his vision for America (the nation, not the continent.)
I take and respect your point (though I disagree on the substance and will be voting for Obama). But there are many VC commenters (including on this thread) who disparage his intelligence and imply or state directly that he would not have succeeded to the point he has so far except on account of his race.
when you get past the fact that Obama did well in law school, what do you get? an uneventful legal career. an irrelevant stay as one of Emil Jones' votes in the Illinois Senate. work as a community organizer, something even as vast an intellect as sarcy can't define. one can moon over the intellect all one wants and still not be able to address accomplishment. harvard/yale/u of c/stanford/"fill in the blank" will graduate magnas every year-what comes next should be an important topic if you are voting on a president, don't you think?
Like the poster above pointed out, if the Messiah had any fluency in Spanish, he would be using it. GW sure used his (and abused it, truth be told, but he was enthusiastic and not afraid to try). That's the difference, isn't it? During his campaigns, GW felt it important enough to reach out that he was willing to let his horrible accent out there for all to hear and the Mister Cool Messiah can't be bothered (image uber alles).
Both Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher excelled in math and science. Judged by our leadership, we Americans show up as major ignoramuses in math, science and foreign language.
Lawyers are the worst: almost universally underschooled in math and science, if dropped into a foreign country, they wouldn't be able to practice their profession and would likely starve but for help from the many foreigners who speak English.
malthus has a point-why is magna from a law school the pinnacle. why not neurosurgeons? physicists? engineers?
I'll agree with one thing; I'd love to see some candidates with science and technical backgrounds. But looking at the fields from both sides this year, that just wasn't likely. I doubt a law blog is the place to look for explanations for that.
This point bears repeating.
Just more bitter people clinging to their language, I guess.
If you want to critique Obama's position on bi-lingual education, fine. But Jim Lindgren's original blog post didn't even mention that issue, and most of the comments have been some sort of weird and perhaps feigned indignation over the proposition that Obama somehow exaggerated his ability to speak Spanish -- a proposition that is not supported by Obama's actual words, as has been shown by other commenters.
As to him wanting other folks to speak foreign languages, well, to quote tgb100 again:
Obama's point about the value of learning other languages is self-evident and hardly debatable, irrespective of whether he himself is fluent or barely passable in Spanish.
As a fellow Ohio resident, good luck using that as a "gotcha" moment.
I have been voting for more than 40 years and cannot recall ever hearing of or seeing so many indications of poor judgment in a person (BO) running for this level of office. Or of such patronizing put downs of those he wants to represent to the rest of the world, and to "lead."
There have been a truly amazing number of apologies, back tracks, refinings and the like that it is truly hard to keep up. All surrounded by the smoke and mirrors that Senator Obama has been misunderstood, or we weren't listening carefully enough (?? Clinton taught us as a nation to parse) or it was some staffer's fault (judgment issue again).
I may not agree with John McCain on a number of things, but I sure as heck don't have these kind of issues with his judgment, and his record which can be openly examined without charges of paranoia or racism.
What kind of a country are we that needs to elect someone who is telling us what we "must" do, that he isn't going to let us stay the same, that over and over we aren't good enough (on an individual or national level) and that he will see to it that we work our butts off -- to support his redemptive programs. Uuuhhmmm. We are adults, most of us voters, remember?
In a family therapy situation we would tell the receivers of this verbal abuse to draw the line or head out the door.
On the language deal -- it's the hypocrisy that's the problem. Some of you don't get that? "Do as I say, not as I do..." thing ya know? Not to mention the nanny nag again, and how embarrassed we all make him. Hint: Get a life Mr. Obama. I hope you don't do that to your kids behind closed doors, but it's such a consistent tone in the campaign, it makes me wonder....
You know most of my kids had some Spanish in elementary school 20 years ago. One of my kids took high school Spanish before Senator Obama came along. One of my kids studied in Sweden (in Swedish) and took Japanese at the same time. My kids would talk in lousy German around the house to each other so we couldn't understand them (because we sometimes used short Hindi phrases to communicate privately). Hell, I took 4 years of French 45 years ago which helped us find a place to stay once in Paris in 1970. I must be a bit bit rustier now. (All those opportunities I have ignored in those spiffy French restauraunts we haven't gone to....)
So do yourself and me a favor Mr. O: Stop lecturing us. But based on your record you can't help it. So I think, living in the South, I better go back to my religion and my gun (gotta buy one) and brush up on my French and Hindi and hope you don't win. I can't bear the thought of having to listen to this stuff for years. (And what IS a community organizer besides someone who gets by on grant money to do "good stuff" that in most cases has little impact,but makes a bunch of people feel good about themselves.)
High honors.
Bingo. 19 years ago, I was fully fluent in German - thinking in it to the point where it took me a couple of weeks to be fully comfortable with English again. I'm now shamed by how awkwardly I speak it - reading comprehension is still mostly intact, but my active vocabulary, fluidity and general confidence are all so low that it is really embarrassing.
Finding ways to get people out into the wider world would solve a lot of problems the US has, and would have a multiplier effect by fixing this one.
Well, for comparison's sake, I speak a "smattering" of dozens of languages I can't communicate in.
Hey, finally one I can field (I know no Spanish). Nope. I've heard his attempts at German. Ganz schrecklich.
The Obamaniacs have jumped on this post as an attack upon Him. Perhaps it's because I'm a historian, but I am simply curious about these things. Pres. and Mrs. Hoover spoke Chinese. Have we had a president since then who was proficient--not to say fluent--in a second language? Some sources have FDR speaking reasonable German and French. But it is not at all clear that this went beyond social conversation.
What is your authority for your statement that Hoover spoke Chinese? According to my best information, the last US President fluent in a foreign language was Teddy Roosevelt, who spoke fluent French, and the first US President to be circumcised was Jimmy Carter.
In office?
Neat. Do you now want to answer how you compare your smattering with McCain's of Korean, or the smatterings of Obama's?
Or, maybe, talk about the original question? Maybe even with an informed opinion? I know, I know, that may be too much to ask. I'm sorry.
Obama attended a state elementary school in Indonesia for several years, he was fluent enough to succeed in a school in which Indonesian was the only language and to play on the playground with monolingual Indonesian children who still remember him. His mother, step-father and sister were or are all fluent in Indonesian, so it was spoken in his home. While it is unlikely that he has retained enough Indonesian to use it in an adult and diplomatic environment, he did have the experience, at an early age, of living in an environment in which English was not the only language.
As to Bill Clinton's German, as someone who has lived in Germany for 19 years, I can report that it was rusty but competent and perfectly comprehensible.
Someone asked in the comments about Obama's daughters, so I added that tidbit.
Not every post about Barack Obama or John McCain is a veiled form of "You should vote for (or against) this guy because . . . ."
I want to know how well Obama speaks Spanish. Apparently no one commenting on this thread knows . . . .
Jim Lindgren