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

[americanalien]

Is this the smartest guy ever or what! I'm just ecstatic that he is our President.

[Julie02]

Flashback - Bush yelling out to the Italian Prime Minister: "Amigo!" ......This is certainly an improvement.

[AmandaBC]

Oh well, remember how he addressed the Pope... :)

http://www.funnychill.com/media/979/Dear_Dalai_Lama/

[TimeGrid]

Yes, the conversation went something like this:

Bush: Amigo!
Berlusconi: Gringo!
Bush: Que pasa?
Berlusconi: Che ne so?
Bush: Tequila?
Berlusconi: Manila!
Bush: Sombrero...
Berlusconi: Torero
Bush: Matador...
Berlusconi: Pomodor...

They kept going like this for a couple of hours...
And, understandably, U.S. - Italian relations have never been better!

[CK4NYSenate]

Stop you are killing me

[roshni]

LOL!

[JessicaMKE]

It's almost disorienting to have such a smart president. I love it.

[americanalien]

He is almost too smart to be true. What a guy!

[cdsister]

I just think it is wonderful we have gone to a President that speaks several languages after having a President that barely spoke English/American at all!

[AmandaBC]

Polyglot-in-Chief definitely sounds much better than Mangler-in-Chief... :)

[Rachael78]

He also made fun of the guy's accent. Cute :-)

[whrsdfyr]

Ehhhhhhhhh, Yup!!!!!

[BurtR]

he's a keeper

[horsewhistle]

Nicholas,

The language most commonly spoken in Indonesia is not Indonesian. It is Bahasa Indonesian. In Malaysia it is Bhasa Malay. Although when translated, Bahasa means language, the structure of the language uses literal forms for verbs, adjectives and nouns, but is not called Indonesian.

Americans don't speak American, we speak English. Its great that President Obama speaks both.

[AmandaBC]

"Americans don't speak American, we speak English."

It's funny how people in Quebec claim they speak Quebecois and not French, while we Anglophones stick to "English" (oh well, maybe it's because technically we're still subjects of the British monarchy... :) ) In truth, the language we speak is as different from standard English as Quebecois is from standard French...

[Feanor]

No.

[AliMB]

correction: Obama speaks 'some' Bahasa... to say that he "speaks both" would infer that the President's Bahasa is on par with his English... From all indications, Mr. Obama couldn't even hold a high-level conversation in the latter language.

[Rachael78]

and you can't make a worthwhile distinction in English. So the two of you are even ... or not :-)

[Agent420]

Americans and Englishmen, two people separated by a common language.

[AmandaBC]

I say tomAHto, you say tomato... ;)

[cricket]

i just love to follow the what the president is doing and love to go back to whitehouse website, i never had this feeling when bush was in the wh. now i feel glad for obama for becoming the first citizen of the country and he fought hard for it and he deserves it. i also have to thank hillary for thoroughly testing obama. certainly obama had learnt a lot fighting hillary than mccain or any other repub. it will be great to have hillary in state dept after having a bad president and bad sos in condi.

[wanttruth]

I love it!!! President Obama is so worldly.

[jollyelle]

We have the coolest president. We are so very lucky.
He is truly inspiring.

[americanalien]

You can say that again. What a great guy to have as our President.

[Sapna]

He is one cool dude. What a departure from Bush, who could not even speak English and I doubt even had a passport before his daddy put him on top.

[Misha1234]

That's cool. Bush could barely speak "Texan".

[aquarius2001]

LMAO!!!! Seriously, that was funny! =))

[AmandaBC]

That would be a compliment, considering even as a Texan he's a fake (born in CT from a very north-east family...)

[Dystopic]

There was actually once a definable Texan culture ... little remains, mostly in Austin.. Dallas thinks they are Texan, but they are really far southern Okies.

[ufopp]

But he spoke fluent gibberish.

[Snowspot]

Did anyone else see the picture and think that they meant Obama brought an Indonesian person?

lol

[MarkInIrvine]

Obama's da man - he's got it goin' on! Dubya was an international embarrassment and it feels good to see that Obama's looking like a prime example of the greatness that the USA can offer to the world.