Obama Impresses State Dept. Staff With His Indonesian (VIDEO)

Barack Obama put on a bilingual display today while visiting the State Department. Obama, who lived in Indonesia from 1967 to 1971, until the age of ten, broke into Indonesian after being greeted by a State Dept. staffer in the language.

ABC News has more details:

As President Obama worked the rope-line at the State Department Thursday, a State Department staffer named Charles Silver, knowing the President once lived in Indonesia, shouted out, "good afternoon" in the local language.

Obama responded back in what Silver later told ABC News was "very good" Bahasa Indonesian. The two then chatted briefly about the neighborhood Obama once lived in.

Video via MSNBC:

Comments

[Greg01]

does anybody know if the President is fluent in the Bahasa or not? He sounds like he can speak the language just fine.

[Takae]

He sounds comfortable with it.

I wouldn't be surprised if he's still fluent because his half-sister has two Indonesian half-siblings (from her father's second marriage) who she apparently still meets with.

[Takae]

His sister Maya, I meant.

[decolonizeme]

I notice that he also has a command of English not recently seen in the Executive Branch.

What a relief to have a competent human being as President.

[KillBillV2]

him speak enlgish more gooder then me due.

[UnknownSoldier]

I spit a non carbonated beverage all over my keyboard

[tealeaves]

hilarious!

[nefertiti]

His English is Brilliant .Japanese apparently are now listening to his speeches to learn English . what a change from Bush . Im going to miss the smirks and Bushism and Jon stewart may not find much material for his show . Bush gave us a few good laughs (and disgust and sadness too )

[Dystopic]

That is common for the Japanese. School children are taught english. Presidential speaches tend to be high content and well written... unlike boosh

[Brokenduck]

Ausgezeichnet, Herr Praesident!

[joceeco]

So, Sie sprechen Deutsch eh?

[AlexFTW]

Wir sprechen hier eigentlich alle Deutsch. Aber das soll ein geheimnis bleiben. Also, klappe zu!

[Sinza09]

Does anyone know if Obama speaks Swahili?

[pope3]

he spoke very fluent swahili when he visited kenya. youtube baby

[eden4barack08]

Link to the utube video please.

[eden4barack08]

How could he? He never lived in Kenya.

[notthistime]

the same way most folks speak foreign languages. You can learn a language right here in the USA.

[Ginger5]

u ever see the michael phelps commercials

[NSeagle78]

The national nightmare is over.

[kkdalloway]

Hear hear! The nightmare is indeed over. I have awakened with shouts of joy every morning since this past Tuesday. I swear I had forgotten how great joy really feels! Still, it's going to be weeks before I feel like I can fully breathe again.

[marcelisa]

Think he'll ask the White House chef to make him some Rendang and Gado-Gado?

[TimeGrid]

Appearently, a couple of weeks ago, when flying for the first time aboard AirForce One... he was shown the extrmely rich menu and... he asked if he could just get an hamburger!

[joceeco]

He ordered a hamburger? Can't get more American than that. I wonder how fox news will spin that one?

[ElSidd]

Chicken Adobo, and Lumpia

[TruthfullyYours]

my favorites! fresh lumpia, kabayan.

[Ajipon]

Nasi goreng, bakso, sate kambing,...

Maybe he will visit a warung in Menteng on his visit to Jakarta?

[KofTX]

I love Rendang!

[Joyful Woman]

How do you say "awesome" in Indonesian? I love my new President (and First Family too).

[TimeGrid]

Mengagumkan.

So what?

[TrnsNtnl]

He said thank you and asked how the other guy was doing in Bahasa. Its nice to have a fellow Bahasa speaker in the white house!

[KarenGeorgetown]

Do you think Bush could point at Indonesia on a map, uh, U-S-Americans, and uh?

[joceeco]

Bush couldn't even find Texas on the map, if he didn't have a driver/pilot he'd be driving in circles, waiting for that Black family to move out of the White House.

[nefertiti]

LOL

[kelleyajones]

LOLX2

[Ibackobama]

LOL! You are so wrong for that!

[roshni]

If it's color coded and you tell him which color to point to.

[KillBillV2]

Iu tie cxi parolas esperanto? Jes aux ne?

[AmandaBC]

How many people speak Esperanto. Would you say more than 25? :)

[tsog]

Apparently more than 2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto/Esperanto

[Greg01]

jes!

[curiousforeigner]

Good Lord. Indonesian??? I'm guessing then that in Australia they speak Australian.

[TimeGrid]

No... in Austria they speak Australian... ;-)

[pope3]

flagged for being tooo ignorant. Australia and Austria are two very different countries. Australians speak english..

[TimeGrid]

Or, at least, that's surely what Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks... ;-)

[pope3]

very funny! Arnold speaks Austrian

[prof92506]

You might want to read up on the Republic of Indonesia. The national language is indeed Indonesian, which in the past was the regional lingua franca (and very closely related to Malay). There are hundreds of distinct ethnic groups and more that 700 different languages and dialects. Indonesian is the official language and taught in all of its schools, even while local languages and ethnic identities are encouraged and even celebrated. Thus, most Indonesians are truly bilingual: they speak both the national language and their own local language or dialect.

[eminent]

so malay is close to bahasi indonesian. mixed it up previously.thanks.

[billyboil]

bloody oath, mate!

[Dystopic]

they speak the Queen's Language

[cornagainstsorcery]

Wow! From a president who almost spoke one language to a president who speaks several. How cool is that!? And, more fodder for the freepers to boot :)

[TimeGrid]

As Native Americans would probably say, the problem with Bush was his "forked tongue"...

[decolonizeme]

Bush also speaks Spanish, although I don't know how one would translate "is our children learning" into espanol.

Perhaps his Spanish grammar is in fact superior to his command of American?

[AlexFTW]

Estas sonos childros learningo.

[TN60]

The Mexican President, at the time, said Bush only spoke passible Spanish. He even trampled that language, too.

[Texas4Obama]

I think it is amazing that President Obama can speak in English, the language of Indonesia, Hawaiian, and also Spanish. He recorded a radio ad in Spanish during the campaign and his accent was wonderful. My guess is that being an attorney he is also familiar with Latin (although Latin is not a spoken language). I am very happy that our new president has such a brilliant mind and knows how to use it ;)

[AmandaBC]

"although Latin is not a spoken language"

Methinks the Pope would disagree... :)

[TimeGrid]

Ipse dixit.

[Texas4Obama]

The Pope does not use Latin n his daily conversations. Saying phrases in a mass is not what I would consider to be 'a spoken language'. Besides, in Italy most Italian Catholic masses outside of the Vatican are given in Italian, at least that is how it has been the times that I have been there.

[Dystopic]

My father in law speaks perfect latin... was in seminary for 8 years to be a cath priest... learned german, spanish, latin, and i forget the 4th

[humuhumunukunukuapuaa]

Pero habla Español?

[AmandaBC]

La gente de Cataluña dice que no hay una lengua llamada "español." La llaman "castellano".

(Never formally studied Spanish, I'm faking it from French, Italian, some Portuguese and a few words of Catalan... :) )

[AliMB]

pretty good job... your grammatical conjugation is a bit off, but i can understand it fairly well

[TimeGrid]

Ooops!
At first I thought you were writing in russian!

Anyway, congrats!

BTW: my second language is English... my first language is gibberish.
;-)

[humuhumunukunukuapuaa]

A person who speaks multiple languages is a "polyglot"

A person who speaks three languages is "trilingual"

A person who speaks two languages is "bilingual"

A person who speaks only one language is "American"

[AmandaBC]

A person who speaks at least two languages but pretends he/she knows only one is... Quebecois. :)

[TimeGrid]

A person who doesn't speak at all is... silent!

[CandaceInCanada]

Brilliant! and sadly true

[Ibackobama]

I have to share a quick story on that note, that I found pretty funny even though the guy involved was probably not amused. There was a job fair in the Dallas school district, I believe it was 2 years ago, and they were looking for bilingual folk, well this guy applied coz he spoke two languages, I cant remember what was his second but, the lady behind the desk looked at him like he was crazy and said 'You are not bilingual, you don't speak Spanish', oh .. was the guy pissed ... And the sad part is that I believe there are lot of people who believe being bilingual is English/Spanish and nothing else ... the ads in Texas newspapers say as much ... God help us all!

[Ibackobama]

Have to share a quick story on that note, that I found pretty funny even though the guy involved was probably not amused. There was a job fair in the Dallas school district, I believe it was 2 years ago, and they were looking for bilingual folk, well this guy applied coz he spoke two languages, I cant remember what was his second but, the lady behind the desk looked at him like he was crazy and said 'You are not bilingual, you don't speak Spanish', oh .. was the guy pissed ... And the sad part is that I believe there are lot of people who believe being bilingual is English/Spanish and nothing else ... the ads in Texas newspapers say as much ... God help us all!

[welliecat]

On the money you are! It is amazing isn't it that (sorry I have the stats) most Americans only speak American English? Where I came from because we are multiracial and multicultural, we speak at least 2 languages.

[mlaiuppa]

Wow. Bilingual.

That's 2 languages more than the last president.

[AliMB]

He is not bilingual... to be bilingual would require fluency in more than one language... There is no evidence to suggest that Mr. Obama's Bahasa is even near this level... You could argue that Mr. Bush's Spanish is equivalent to President Obama's Bahasa (and before I get virulent replies, I am not saying that Bush is as smart as Obama).

[wanttruth]

If I'm not mistaken, President Obama speaks not only English but an Hawaiian dialect too. Even if he doesn't speak Bahasa at a complex level, he was able to respond quickly in Bahasa and answer the staffer's question. According to a longer version of the brief conversation with the staffer, President Obama was able to refer to a small area in a Jakarta neighborhood using the Bahasa Ianguage. The longer clip is on the ABCNews.com website. President Obama seemed very comfortable conversing with the staffer.

[alfarizi]

I don't think Bush speak good level of English, that's why he made alot of stupid mistake.

[chiara12]

Oh good Lord, do you have "evidence" that he doesn't speak a more "fluent" Bahasa Indonesian than demonstrated on this very short clip? Do you? I thought not. It's not a contest. And by the way, thank you for not saying that Bush is smarter than Obama because that may have invited some pretty intense argument.