Redstate

What an obnoxious rhetorical device you have there.

My kids speak Chinese and are learning to write it too, as am I. How are *your* rugrats doing with other languages?

When hanging around with his European friends, Obama is terribly embarrassed by America and its backward, unlettered and unwashed populace.

I remind myself of the National Buffoon European vacation being planned, and imagine if there will be another awesome vid of him speaking at Brandeburg Gate in Spanish or indonesian. Or maybe he'll just say "Merci beaucoup". That ought to be a real crowd pleaser for the Berliners.

Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business … frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise.Ronald Reagan

How dare he insult my Spanish. I just finished 3 years of HS Spanish, and I probably speak it better than he does!
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...know French?

I'm sorry if I embarass your stammering, two-faced, elitist worshipfulness. I don't know French, but I know some universal sign language I'd like to show you for making that comment (and it's not "O.K.").

Personally I find it embarassing that my country may elect as its next president a Harvard grad who is unable to put together a coherent, grammatically correct phrase without the help of a teleprompter.

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A Presidential candidate saying that he is "embarrassed" by Americans, whatever the context of his statement, is totally unacceptable.

I'm looking foward to seeing what kind of hay McCain can make out of this.

What really strikes me is the totally CASUAL tone of mockery against Americans and America that he assumes here. As if it's all so obvious that nobody would question it.

Obama: "It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here. They all speak English. They speak French. They speak German. And then we go over to Europe...and all we can say is 'Merci beaucoup."

Honestly, when I hear nonsense like this, it makes me want to cling even harder to my religion and guns... no doubt to the further embarrassment of Barack Obama.

They ALL speak English, French, and German? Really? I'd like to see statistics for this.

His disdain for Americans and his grotesque overestimation of everybody who is NOT an English-speaking native born American is staggering.

Unbelievable that this man is not only running for president but likely to win.

And the tide is beginning to rise.

My favorite part is watching him as he stares at the ground, apparently looking for the tongue that fell from his mouth. For all his supposed eloquence, his ability to string thoughts together is somewhat suspect. One wonders if this is what the liberal's promise of education reforms brings. On a lighter note, if we ever do decide to start teaching English in this country again, I think we should sign him up.

But he's a genius in France.

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Spain/Italy....the cabies/doorman all wanted to speak/learn
English. They wanted to speak/learn English. We challenged
their "native tongue" in the museums and other historical
areas. Trust me, the rest of them want to know the language
that everyone else wants to know "English". Why? We are
the one country that can travel everywhere without the restrictions other than England.
These countries travel freely. If they want to converse in
a common language, English is it.

I guess I'm one of the poor, benighted Americans that the elitist Senator is embarrassed about. After all, I was born and raised in ignorant Texas of all places. I've studied Latin, German, Hebrew, a little Arabic and I've picked up a reading knowledge of Spanish. I regularly read a Mexican newspaper on the internet in Spanish.

My three daughters are fluent in Spanish as well as English. My oldest daughter is in Cairo this summer learning to be fluent in Arabic. She plans on studying Hebrew as well as Arabic next year. She may do graduate work in Arabic and plans to add Farsi.

Sorry that we embarrass you, Senator.

Cheers,

Abu el Banat

some of Obama's points;

"1. The part where Obama admits that he "doesn't get" the drive for English only?"
Who on earth would want a country where every one only speaks one language?

"2. The part where he states, immediately afterwards, that one shouldn't worry about the immigrants, because "they'll learn English"
Well, most people think that immigrants should learn to speak english (even if alot more work is needed on this , as the poster says)

"4. The part where he says that he's embarrassed by Americans, especially compared to the French?"
So, you are proud about our lack of linguistic ability???

My favorite part goes on off screen, just to the right John Kerry dropped his head into his hands and was heard muttering "What a dolt"

Voting for the Sexy(Pres) - Sexy(VP) Dream Ticket
Jindal/Palin 2012

Does Berlitz have an Ebonics course? Would that make ME bilingual?

[expletive deleted] multilingualism, [expletive deleted] bilingualism - for that matter, [expletive deleted] monolingualism - we need more fearless leaders like Bush and McCain have dominion over precisely zero languages

(that's French for being a jerk)

nt

But believe me, it's not all that helpful except when I'm over there. It's true that many European young people study English and other languages from elementary school on, but only a couple kids in any classroom acquire anything like a working knowledge of another language. It's not like any person you walk up to in the street is going to be able to answer you. My experience is that Americans are far more tolerant of people who speak with an accent than Europeans are. I think generally we respect someone who tries to speak English. The French, on the other hand, mock Americans who try to speak French.

it shouldn't be needed in order for me to communicate in my own neighborhood, this again shows his cluelessness to alot of immigrants in the states and his elitist and 'not one of us'.

This would make a great commercial for us gun clingers in PA and OH, etc.

It does depend where you are in Europe. Britain and France are pretty mono-lingual, the rest are probaly better with the Dutch and the Nordics often being pretty fluent in several languages.

I have very poor french and little else, I'm sorry to say.

I propose we all learn "Obamics".

1. "As I've said consistently" = "As I've said since yesterday".
2. "I don't get it" = "I agree with all you Spanish-only speakers that It's rude of us Americans to speak English instead of us all learning your language."
3. "Don't worry, they'll learn English" = "Stop harassing them to learn English, we need to learn Spanish".
4. "I'm embarassed by Americans" = "Why can't we all be bilingual like the Europeans, who obviously have perfected a system where you cannot travel more than 200 miles without having to learn another language".
5. "We need to learn French" = "In the event that Americans travel to France, I am embarassed, as an American, that they did not take the time to master French. Likewise, Americans should know Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Polish, Russian, Czech, and most, if not all, of the other European languages, or else we are going to be mighty embarassed, as a nation."

Viva los liberales gringos locos!

...is that there are actually sound, practical reasons for more multilingual education in America (we could use more people fluent in Chinese, Arabic and Farsi, for example), but for Obama, it's all about the "aesthetics".

He's basically worried that more of us can't order in a French restaurant, and that we'll embarrass him in front of his friends.

The GOP really needs to "viralize" this video and ram the point of Snobama's elitism home.

Obama just gave the RNC a gift; take advantage, guys.

I understand from one of the news people that Senator Obama continued his discussion with a suggestion that young people would have better job opportunities if they had more than one language. I certainly agree with him. That is one reason that I encourage my daughters to be multi-lingual.

The Senator seems incapable of making a perfectly reasonable point without insulting the country in the process. Of course, he probably fails to see his comments as insulting. For him, the peons in this country are hopelessly ignorant and need his superior intellect to guide them and require them to better themselves, whether they want to or not. "Peons, you will learn French, so your social betters are no longer embarrassed by your hopeless ignorance."

This attitude simply reflects his self-image of moral and intellectual superiority that becomes more and more grating with each passing day. However, with Senator Obama's increasingly obvious ignorance of so many issues, one wonders how he long can continue to hold such feelings of superiority or persuade others of its reality.

Cheers,

Abu el Banat

First off, the reason for when and why the rest of the world can speak English is because that's the international language for BUSINESS. When a French company is in discussions with a German or Japanese company, they tend to speak in English because (a) the success of the American political and business industry has led the way in the world, and (b) it's a common language that every nationality can understand without everyone having to learn six-to-ten different languages.

Second, how successful has bilingualism worked in Canada with the province of Quebec? Hmmmmm.... not so well, huh?

Thirdly, perhaps The Obamessiah should've read THIS article before opening his mouth and proving once again how vacuous he is:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1820358,00.html?xid=rss-wo...

*sigh*

So what if he's originally from Kenya and has a lefty Muslim half-brother and was a Hawaiian before moving to Illinois to become a member of the Legislature and then a Senator and his "mentor" was a pastor who said what he said and now he wants Americans to raise their children to speak Spanish because he feels embarrassed by them in the shadow of the French?

So what? Huh?

It's not going to stop him from raising your taxes! I mean, that's the important thing, right?

So...so what????? So What!?!?! SO WHAT?!?!?!!!!!!!! SO WHAAASASMCSDCLKDMcslkmsdclkm;orig;l!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just finished my college foreign languages courses, all of them (14 hours) in CAJUN FRENCH! It's almost an extinct language now, because decades ago, children who spoke a single word in French in a Louisiana school were severely disciplined. Seems we used to have a notion of English as our language in America. Wish we'd get it again.

Stand up, and let's acquit ourselves like men.

My favorite part is the laugh he gets at the end. That looks like Obama's brain going: "Oh for Pete's sake. Oh no. These embarrassing corn-pone 'Murricans just let me go. They walked me into it and they let me go. I was supposed to get a standing ovation at that line. They warned me about this at Harvard...you can't trust these people..."

The question is: has McCain or at least his surrogates said even one word yet about this nonsense? If not, God help us.

is because America is the most influential country on the planet. Every single air control tower in the world uses the english language for all official communications. Why? Because we won WWII.

If you want to get ahead in the world, you learn to speak english. It may not be fair, but it is true.

in his entire life.

Between the ages of six months and 18 years, I learned a total of 7 languages (meaning I was able to speak, read and write): English, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, Afrikaans, and French. In college I learned 2 more (with much less proficiency, just an ability to read and a limited ability to speak and write): Arabic and Persian.

I learned these languages because my father was a foreign Service officer in the US Dept of State, and I lived and went to school in a number of countries.

One of the mysteries of language acquisition is that a child can learn, apparently without effort, one or more languages completely, until about the age of 7 or 8 (or the advent of literacy). The ability declines and disappears, and by the time a child is in high school, language acquisition will be more of an effort, involving memorizing, learning rules, drills and vocabulary, etc.

This was my experience. At one time I spoke Icelandic in school, Finnish with my sisters, and English with my parents and grandparents. By the time I was in high school I had lost fluency in these languages, and I learned Afrikaans and French, which were academic requirements, through study and memorization. My father, who learned these languages (except English) as an adult, remained fluent in all of them.

In short, i have no trouble believing that Obama learned Basaha as a child in Indonesia, and was fluent in it, though his ability to think or speak or read it will have disappeared completely. Similarly he doubtless learned Spanish in the course of filling a language requirement in college, or possibly in high school.

In short, he is wildly inflating his creds in this area, proving once again that he is fluent only in the universal language of bs.

First of all, there is no need for Americans to learn Spanish. In the nineteenth century, the largest group of immigrants after English-speaking immigrants was German speakers. Therefore we had no particular need for Americans to learn German, because we had a large number of native German speakers. German was studied, but only academically, for purposes of scholarship.

Similarly, we will continue to have (through immigration)a large number of native Spanish speakers for whom Spanish is the first language. The need is for them (as it was for my German immigrant ancestors) to learn English.

Second point, there is no particular national utility in developing a large cadre of Spanish speakers. To digress for a moment: a native speaker of English can learn Spanish with immersion for a few months or even weeks, or a few years of course work, because it's an Indo-European language similar to english in syntax, grammar, phonology, etc, with many cognates. English is the result of two languages (french and Anglo-Saxon) combining after the Norman Conquest of England. Hence any romance language (Italian, Spanish, of course French) is acquired by an English speaker with relative ease. I'm afraid his mastery of Spanish is not the intellectual achievement Obama seems to think it is.

Aside from being easily and quickly acquired, Spanish is not of much utility. Consider that German is a good language to study in pursuing science, engineering,social science and military history. My sister studies Latin and Greek because she teaches classics. I study French because my field is diplomatic history and French is (sigh) the international language of diplomacy. English is the international language of business and technology. In short, my policy would be to discourage the study of Spanish, not encourage it, on the grounds that it is (a) easily learned and (b) of no strategic value.

Finally, on the latter point: There are languages which we need to study because we need fluency in them for strategic reasons. When I was in college I had a fellowship from NDEA, a government program which funded language study in certain ares: Chinese, Arabic, Urdu, Pashtun, Japanese, Russian, etc. Obama seems to think this is a new idea with him, on the contrary this program (NDEA=National Defense Eucation ACt) was passed in 1957, after Sputnik jolted Americans out of our complacency. Much of the act dealt with science and engineering education, but language proficiency in strategic languages was a priority.

Incidentally, while in general I'm astounded at Lord Obama's ignorance of what might seem to be basic facts of American political and social history, I am pretty pleased that, according to Obama, having lived overseas as a child gives me all the foreign policy credentials I need to be elected President!

This, like so many of his other positions, shows his utter lack of any logical reasoning skills. The best I can gather Obama is (i) just making fun of the intellectual lazyness of the electorate for not choosing to learn a foreign language, (ii) taking a policy position that people should be expected to learn a foreign language so they can improve the US's image when they travel abroad, or (iii) taking a policy position that people should be expected to learn a foreign langauge to accomodate non-English speaking visitors or immigrants. (The fact that he can speak for a full minute without making a coherent point says volumes in itself.)

If the first option is his point, it's just another example of Obama belittling the people he hopes will vote for him.

If the second option is his point, he's off base. A large majority of the population will never travel outside the US and for those that do, they may spend a week their entire life in a country speaking any given language. And which language does one choose to learn?

If the third option is his point, he's managed to both annoy the electorate and ignore reality. I suspect telling people they should learn a foreign language to accomodate visitors or immigrants will play about as well as telling people to give up their guns. And, as in the case of travelling abroad, this just doesn't make sense for most people. It's hard to blame someone for not spending years learning a foreign language because someday somebody who speaks French may ask for directions to the mall.

In the end, if learning a foreign language is useful people will learn -- whether for education or job or fun or general interest. But for most people a foreign language has about as much practical value as calculus.

Obama also ignores business realities. Much of the world learns English because it is almost impossible to engage in international commerce without it. Sit in a room with Chinese, Korean and German businesspersons and the only language they will have in common is English.

Anybody know whether His Worship knows French, German, or Spanish??? That seems like a fair question now.

When I went to Dubia I noticed that there was no problem with not knowing one single word in Arabic. The shopkeepers all haggled in english. the cabbies could get you where you wanted to go (and they were third country nationals) and even at thier famed "mall of the Emirates" (the on with the ski slope) the directory was in english on e side and arabic on the other. I watched the most middle eastern looking family ever approach and choose to use the english side to navigate the depths of that place.
My ancestors didn't roam the globe with muskets fighting for crown and country so that in the future the successor states to the colonies that they established would compele people to learn other tongues. Reality comples people to learn English. For most people in the US (until "La Raza" conquers us) learning another language just isn't worth the investment in time/ effort. If it is for you, individually, great. Knock yourself out. Just don't force me to do the same.

The largest possible carbon footprint you can have is opposition to nuclear power. Not that we should worry about "carbon footprints" in the first place.

are you talking about george w.
oh, wait...he went to yale
oh, wait...he can't read a teleprompter...
really thought you were talking about w.

oh wait, i guess i should of "reply to this" again
jez, when will i get it right