A former co-worker learned to say hello, good-bye, what's your name, and let's have a beer in 30 languages.

"With even the White House now smearing Obama as a Muslim, one wonders if..."

There's that phrase again. Which, once again, renders Goldfarb's entire post as rumor-mongering garbage.

It's a refreshing change to have a president who not only is fluent in his native tongue (can read too), but is at least interested in other languages.

A former co-worker learned to say hello, good-bye, what's your name, and let's have a beer in 30 languages.

But probably not in that order. ;-)

A former co-worker learned to say hello, good-bye, what's your name, and let's have a beer in 30 languages

"Please" and "thank you" are two other phrases that I know in several languages that I have no claim to be conversant in.

I'm only surprised that he's revealing his fluency in the language of bin Laden in public.
Posted by: Al on June 3, 2009 at 4:01 PM |

I'm constantly surprised that you continue to advertise your stupidity every time you post. I suppose I should be grateful there are some constants in the universe.

Yes, it's silly inferring from a single word - but what's up with Kristof and the Arabic "first-rate accent" claim? Is there a tape? BTW, one can learn accent for a language more easily than the vocabulary and grammar, there being less to learn (albeit with some physical demands.)

Hah!

Try Hungarian. When I travel, I learn the rudimentary polite words--please, thank you, one beer--out of a sense of courtesy, an attempt to recognize that I am a guest. The hungarian word for thank you is pronounced something like "kuschenom" and spelled differently (there are a lot of Hungarian letters which are distinguished by diacritical marks).
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The bigger crisis will ensue when Obama says "Insh'allah" which is unavoidable after a few hours with arab speakers speaking english.

"BHO is a foreign-born Muslim. I would be shocked if he didn't speak Arabic. I'm only surprised that he's revealing his fluency in the language of bin Laden in public." - Al.

That's it... Al has revealed himself to be a right-wing parody. It simply is not possible to say those words with a straight face. I find it incredulous that anyone anywhere could possibly believe that.

and as far as Arabic, the only real hint has came from Nick Kristof, who heard Obama recite the Muslim call to prayer in Arabic and with a "first-rate accent" back in 2007.

Considering that Obama heard the call to prayer five times a day, every day, during the time he lived in Indonesia, it's reasonable that it's one phrase in Arabic that has stuck in his mind.

Considering that Obama heard the call to prayer five times a day, every day, during the time he lived in Indonesia, it's reasonable that it's one phrase in Arabic that has stuck in his mind.

I lived in SE Asia as a child and heard the call to prayer five times a day every day as well. Thirty years later I still know it.

Do you honestly think Goldfarb has ever said "thank you"...even in English? It's way too much to fathom.
But now we know for sure, thanks to the indepth investigative skills of one Michael Goldfarb, that Obama is definitely a Muslim. The mind reels!

I'd rather not learn how to speak conservative these days. LOL! I like my brain cells functioning.

Once again we hear from Goldfarb. Even the right wing considers him to be a dimwit. Pat Buchanan said that anyone who graduated from Princeton without honors was a D+ student, and Goldfarb graduated without honors. If he did so poorly in college, why is he regarded as anything to listen to now? s/

With even the White House now smearing Obama as a Muslim ...

WTF??? Am I the only one with no clue about what Goldfart is referring to with this phrase?

Vaya con Dios. There. Proof both that I'm fluent in Spanish and that I'm not an atheist.

What a simple universe these folks live in.

This isn't a phrase, it's one word! good lord, imagine if he'd said something really complex, like sabah al khair (good morning) or even used a common phrase, like inshallah (god willing, i hope so, etc.). Certainly I would hope that anyone who has visited, say, Iraq for a non-trivial length of time would pick up basic stuff like this.

“That's very good. The guy memorizes four words and he plays like he's intercontinental!”" - Geo. W. Bush - 2002 in Paris. Good Times

WTF??? Am I the only one with no clue about what Goldfart is referring to with this phrase?

Goldfart is referring to Obama distancing himself from his Muslim roots during the election while playing them up now as he visits the Middle East.

Lifelong Dem - If you click on "post like this one", you'll be able to click again to the reference of the "smear."

Basically, the White House mentioned Obama's connections to the Muslim world prior to the trip. Naturally, the Right Wing is still upset that anyone could have thought their mentions of Obama's Muslim connections last year were meant in a negative way.

Goldfart is referring to Obama distancing himself from his Muslim roots during the election while playing them up now as he visits the Middle East. -- El Tigre

Basically, the White House mentioned Obama's connections to the Muslim world prior to the trip. -- Old School

They never ever get tired of that same old crap,do they? They really are proud of their ignorance.

This calls to mind the old wisecrack:

"She knows 14 languages and can't say 'no' in any of them."

I travel extensively for work and always learn how to say Please, Thank you, Excuse me, and Where is the toilet in the local language. Except Thai...that was just too difficult for me and I was petrified I would be asking for a penis burger or something. Those tonal languages are a killer!

Look! More manufactured outrage from the right!

Really? Where?

EVERYWHERE!

Why has it become un-American to show minimal courtesy to ones host?

Time for Steve and libs in general to rephrase the neocon talking points. Goldfarb doesn't believe the crap he's spewing. He kinda hopes that there are people dumb enough to believe him, though they are probably the people dumb enough to always vote Republican, so getting them to believe inanity is no big feat. I suppose a few gullible swing voters might be swayed by such an "argument" but not many.

By and large, stories like Goldfarb's are designed to do precisely what it did - piss liberals off. Get them talking about "what kind of idiot would write..." "what kind of idiot would believe..." "doe he think we're all stupid enough to think..." and so far. Just like our creepy little shut-in Al. The only difference between what a writer like Goldfarb does and a troll like Al is that Goldfarb gets paid in actual money and not no-longer-existent McCain points. It's as much of a morale booster to the right to have those pieces read and bitched about and picked over as it was to the Japanese during World War II to have "Tokyo Rose" say demoralizing things about the Allied forces. Even when "Tokyo Rose's" reports didn't demoralize - when they merely pissed off our troops and got them griping about how she had a lot of nerve to spew those lies she was spewing, the Japanese could take comfort that one way or another, they were getting under our skin just a little more. Whether it was taking the wind out of our sails, or making us too angry to fight effectively, either way, they won. When it comes to ripping off the 1940s Japanese Army, why stop with waterboarding? Why not co-opt their propaganda tools as well?

Remember, every moment the talking heads in the media take crap like this seriously, it's another minute they're not talking about our getting into a war based on lies, wars for oil, "enhanced interrogation techniques," who deserves a trial at the Hague, climate change, our shoddy healthcare or educational system, etc.

Bush said EXACTLY the same thing in virtually the same circumstances when he visited Saudi Arabia.

Although in Bush's case it probably was someone from the State Department that prompted him whereas Obama might have remembered the words from his time growing up.

When I travelled to Europe, I memorized "Please", "Thank You", "Pardon Me", and "Do you speak English?" in Italian, and Greek. My companion was fluent in French. On another trip, I met two women from Italy, in Germany. They spoke some English, and no German; I spoke some German, and no Italian. But we had a fun afternoon teaching each other to read the guidebook in each other's language(s). My Italian was without accent! I didn't understand a word of it...

I was an altar boy back in the pre-Vatican II days. I can still render a rather passable version of various long Latin prayers, having recited them nearly every day for years. In no way am I remotely conversant in Latin. On the other hand, I met Obama with my son, who speaks a number of langauges, including Indonesian, at a fund-raiser a couple of years ago. Obama was able to engage in rather decent conversation in Indonesian without any prior 'warning,' so I suspect he hasn't lost that from his youth. Which, of course, is all for the good.

kilkee, you've got me beat. In my church choir, we sang old church songs in Latin, we learned the lyrics phonetically, as far as I know, I could've been singing "Oh, Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercdes Benz" in Latin.

Bush said EXACTLY the same thing in virtually the same circumstances when he visited Saudi Arabia.

Although in Bush's case it probably was someone from the State Department that prompted him whereas Obama might have remembered the words from his time growing up.

Considering the longstanding business ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family, GWB probably heard the word at the dinner table. Or got it pounded into his skull by Poppy.

Well, I guess my earlier comment from the first post is null and void though I'd rather not bother with getting ready for wingnut spew and just do my best, as the President says, and "avoid the chatter" altogether. To Steve's credit, he saw this coming.

Bush spoke Spanish with a horrible, embarrassing American accent. Which of course proved how authentic he was.

Bush said EXACTLY the same thing in virtually the same circumstances when he visited Saudi Arabia.

Of course Dubya said it with his trademark fake corn-pone Texas accent, which probably sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard.

I'm the one who is confused. Wouldn't it be a good thing if he spoke Arabic?

Well ... these same guys probably would have claimed that it was a "gaffe" if Obama had responded in English (and then found a way to make fun of Joe Biden while they were at it). Or bring up claims about teleprompters, etc.

We shouldn't be surprised. If the mustard on Obama's burger makes him un-American, then anything he says in a foreign language must do so too.

These are the tactics that these guys learned at Newt Gingrich's knees back in the 1980's and 1990's. Always label. Brand your opposition with bad words like "sick" and "corrupt" and "reckless" (or, in Obama's case, the classic "selfish"). Criticize everything your opposition does, personalize the criticisms, and make the voters think that they don't share their values. Create constant media stunts that take over the news cycle and initiative from your opponents. Always be on the attack. Attack, attack, attack.

These days, those tactics are all these guys have. If you scratch the surface under these tactics, you find ... more tactics.

Interesting to find out that everyone of my generation is now considered fluent in Japanese because we knew the lyrics to "Mr. Roboto."

I agree Goldfarb doesn't believe what he is writing. Obviously.

Who are the readers of the Weekly Standard? He is pandering to them - to the idiots among them and their anti-Muslim fears. But most of (even) them aren't stupid enough to believe this either - for those people it's just a jab at liberals and something to make them feel clever. (In this way they are similar to the dumb-ass arguments often made on this site, which aren't really believed by poster or commenters - pointing out the hypocrisy of our enemies or congratulating ourselves on a useful argument to pull more of the rubes over to the left side).

And notice how Goldfarb dishonestly morphs Kristof's "Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer" into a full recitation.

Not that it would even matter if he did know more than the opening lines. I am entirely monolingual in any practical sense, but I can recite the entire Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, its original language. That doesn't make me a scholar of either Aramaic or of the Bible, nor a fluent speaker of Aramaic or any other Semitic language.

What desperate scraping of the bottom of the conservative barrel this shoddy, threadbare smear is. To think these yahoos once ran a country.

No hablo francais.

Tu parle espanol?

Oui senoirita.

My native tongue is Philadelphic.

Goldfarb is a rabble-rousing, demagogic charlatan. and a douche.

Ich bin ein Berliner.

Uh, may I just remind everyone that Obama grew up in Indonesia? I doubt he learned Arabic from that experience.

Keep in mind, in their universe, Condi Rice speaks good Russian and George Bush can speak Spanish. In their universe a little learning is all the learning to be done. Of course knowing 'shukran' indicates total fluency.

After eight years of the Crawford Cretin, I'm just pleased that we have a President who is proficient in composing complete, grammatical sentences in English.

Goldfarb is a lazy hack asshole probing for how transparently stupid a claim he can make and still be taken seriously.

Beej, think Latin and the Catholic Church.

I say danke, hola, ai gamisou, and Quapla. Does that make me a German/Spanish/Greek/Klingon triple-agent of doom?

Oh. My. God. Even I know that the Arabic word for "thank you" is "Shukran." And it's the only word of Arabic that I know. If you're a tourist, however, as I have been on a guided tour to Egypt, it's a very useful one to know. This would be funny if it weren't that four years ago, supposedly serious people were talking about John Kerry's ability to speak French as though it were some sort of devastating character flaw. If this is how more than a tiny minority of Americans really think, then maybe we really do deserve a reputation with the rest of the world as pathetically ignorant, superstitious hicks.

I don't speak Arabic, but I do know how to say "koss ummak" and I would be happy to share that with Mr. Goldfarb if I ever meet him.

Vanya,

A French professor I knew socially and was a pied noir from Algiers told me Arabic was probably one of the best, most expressive languages for cursing.

I'm fluent in Portuguese, pretty good in Spanish and can still speak enough German to get by in Germany.

None of this did me any good when I went to Morocco and bought two rugs in Tetouan. I made sure I knew how to say no in Arabic: la. Otherwise I would have returned with far more rugs than I wanted.

Oi, Goldfarb! I can't speak Yiddish, but I know the words scheisskopf, putz, and goniff. Two of those, I'm sure, fit you, and the third might just, if you count stealing the time it takes to read your infantile twaddle (no, that's not Yiddish).

Ed

Steve, you did not display enough disdain in your reaction.

I mean, let's be honest. Godlfarb's accusation is mind-bogglingly stupid. Just blindingly, amazing, breath-takingly, sitting-and-eating-pop-corn-watching-the-train-wreck-in-slow-motionly dumb.

Are you giving him the benefit of the doubt there, at the end? There should be a law against being that stupid. Police should come and beat his parents with rubber hoses. And shoot his dog. I mean, you've got to be kidding with this nonsense.

I'm a typical American in that I speak only one language, and I don't speak that too well, but even I can say thank you in about 6 languages. Jesus, what a dipshit.

If Goldfarb is "confused" about this,

it's because he wants to be.

It was a joke.

There. I hope that sets poor puzzled Steve's little mind at rest.

He learned it at his MADRASSA! omg talk about stuck on stupid.

Republicans especially should understand the "No" is the same in many languages. Yes, on the other hand is quite another story.

America has always been divided into two camps: those who are in favor of stupidity and those who are against it. It is highly unfortunate that Buckley's passing has left the Republican party in the hands of the pro-stupid wing. It is not in the least comforting that the leaders of the pro-stupid faction are not themselves stupid.

Now you too can be fluent in Balinese.

SELAMAT MINUM:
a phrase you would likely hear if dining somewhere in the area of Ubud, Indonesia when people raise their glasses of arak and other such beverages. It can be loosely translated as "welcome to drink" and is the equivalent of "cheers" in Balinese. When taking the first bite of food, "selamat minak" is the proper informality; "welcome to eat."

TomP (first comment)

The only other phrase you absolutely need after all those beers is..."Where is the toilet, please?"

And "How Much Is That" the next...

Vanya, I don't understand Arabic, so I don't know what "koss ummak", but it sounds supiciouslly the English "Kiss My Ass!"

Anyone?

PS Actually, I'm now going to one of those language tranlation sites to find out...

I've been fluent in Russian since the 1970s. Does that make me a Communist? If we had a president who was fluent in Arabic, that might be one of the best things that could happen. Only a WATB wingnut scaredy-cat could possibly think otherwise.