Obama cut an ad in Spanish:
No idea what he said, but Ben Smith reports the following:
Marrero says Obama’s pronunciation isn’t bad. “Bush’s was worse and he actually half-spoke the language,” she writes.
Which is funny, because Bush only half-speaks English, too.
MikeJ
He does do a good job, but all of the takes are short. The longest he speaks at any one time is about 8 seconds.
Beats the hell out of my nonexistent skillz though.
Comrade Stuck
HMM, Where did he learn such fluent Spanish? It is a furrin tongue you know. Did his mother teach him and where is she REALLY from. Obama must clear up these troubling questions and if he can’t produce a Mexican birth certificate, then he must be hiding something. You know, he is more brownish than blackish and what about those reported photos of him eating a Taco. They will be produced by Senor Johnsonia next week at 9 AM, or maybe the next week.
Comrade The Other Steve
Joe McCain! For the WIN!
Comrade The Other Steve
It get’s better…
HE CALLED BACK!
A la lanterne les aristos
Not bad.
But the true test of Spanish-language skillz is how one pronounces ‘una cerveza, por favor’
Fulcanelli
Looks like Sarah Palin’s Russian neighbors have been looking back at her.
Courtesy of the GOS.
/выиграть
Brian J
Since I’ll probably forget to post this tomorrow, I’ll post it now. Via Brad DeLong, a story in the Politico:
This is the sort of story that makes me think (a) Obama could be a socially transformative figure, (b) I am living in a very special period of history, and (c) Obama and the Democrats are going to absolutely demolish McCain and the Republicans come election day.
SamFromUtah
Spanish, eh? Maybe it’s time for McWorse and all his little wizards to dust off some immigration-fear!
Shit, they’ve been reprising every other wingnut hobbyhorse lately, why not make some baseless accusations and further alienate Hispanic people?
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
He does sound good in the body of the message, but the "approve of this message" tag sounds more awkward. Was that recorded earlier, maybe, before he got more fluent?
Octavian
"Barack Hussein Obama is going to turn our wonderfully white country into the United States of Mexico."
–someone at the Corner, tomorrow.
bwaage
Well, that settles it, we have to elect John McCain. Our country has a proud tradition of ridiculously embarassing presidential brothers, with the exception of 2000, when we mistakenly elected the the family fuck-up instead of his brother.
dorkboy
You know who else speaks Spanish?
Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Che Guevara, Mexicans, Michael Dukakis, that dog from the Taco Bell commercials (actually that was pretty cool).
I expect to see an expose on how NObama is pro-latino and anti-American post haste!
blogreeder
That’s because he’s parroting it.
oh really
It’s not that complicated.
He said:
My Spanish is a little rusty, but this guy, umm, Rich Davis, I think was his name, assured me that the translation was accurate.
SamFromUtah
Which is funny, because Bush only half-speaks English, too.
Why do you hate America?
…sorry. I keep getting these flashbacks to 2003 today.
Delia
I’m waiting for Lou Dobbs’s head to explode.
Comrade Nikolita
It looks like a good ad. :)
As for electronic voting, you guys should just use a pencil and paper. Faster and easier and pretty foolproof. Make an "x" for your choice, fold the paper, and drop it in the box.
Brandon
Rough translation
"We share a dream:
that hard work can help your family prosper
that if you are sick, you can have affordable medical care
that our children can have a great education, be they rich or poor.
This is the american dream.
I’m not asking for your vote, not only for me, or for the democrats,
but to keep this dream alive for you, and for your children
I’m Barack Obama, and I approve of this message"
stickler
Obama seems to talk the crazy moonbat language pretty well, so far as I can tell.
But where does he stand on reconstructing our people’s community? Our unity, our loyalty, our willingness to defend our homeland?
Fest steht und treu die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein…
Ahem. Sorry. No furrin speak here, no sirree. Move on.
KRK
He did one of these for the primary, too.
Funkhauser
This part was good; the pronunciation was very smooth
This part was gringo.
Oh, and Bush never really spoke Spanish. It was written into speeches and prepared for him. Really, it was awful.
KRK
It was for the P.R. primary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK-l_0jVtEU
Funkhauser
Screw you and the blockquotes you came in on.
DanJoaquinOz
I do speak Spanish (hence the name Joaquin) and I’d say Obama does very well. His accent is mild, his pronunciation is excellent and best of all, he gets the cadence of the language perfectly. Like all Latin languages Spanish has a very distinct music. Obama gets that aspect perfectly and that’s probably the hardest thing for non-Spanish speakers to master. It’s also clearly more than just "parroting" as someone above suggested. Watch Obama’s hands, he’s got the music of the language in him. Does the Senator play a musical instrument? In my experience musical ability and lingustic dexterity are often closely linked.
Martin
Meh, if McCain’s ads saying that Obama wasn’t on the side of immigrants because he didn’t support amnesty, guest worker programs, and so on didn’t cause Lou’s head to explode, then nothing will.
I thought John King on Anderson Cooper was funny tonight. They had just gone over the SNL skit from this evening with the computer screen with the states and Anderson asked John if he was ever tempted to do anything like that. He joked that he should go move the mexican border for Lou Dobbs. Every now and then I get the sense that Lou is the butt of a lot of jokes around there.
Ecks
Isn’t Obama was supposed to have some half brother living in a hut in Africa or something? If we can confirm that in the next 2 weeks the only tension on election night will be if Obama hits five thirty eight exactly :)
This was far more literally true of Canada’s ex PM Jean Chretien who was french Canadian but had this mild aphasia that lead to weirdly mangled syntax. People mistook him to be stupid at their own risk, but one of the standard lines on him was: "he’s very balanced. He speaks neither official language."
Common Sense
Jim Hightower had the immortal quote concerning Bush’s fluency in Spanish:
"Oh Good. Now he can be bi-ignorant"
Warren Terra
Bwaage, you forget that, amazingly, George W. Bush isn’t the most embarassing Bush brother – there’s also Neil who is fully qualified as an Embarassing Presidential Brother. It’s just that Neil’s foulups, even the amazing Shanghai Prostitute Freebie Story, really had to struggle for attention what with his brother’s administration messing the whole country up.
And the line about Bush half-speaking Spanish like he half-speaks English reminds me of a great line from the late, lamented Molly Ivins, referring to the declared intentions of a notably dimwitted Texas Governor to learn Spanish (not, sadly, Gov. Bush; Gov. Clayton Williams, iirc). The lines was: "Good, now he’ll be bi-ignorant."
blogreeder
What the hell does that mean?
Is "transformative" the new "diversity"? Will we have to take "transformative" classes at work now?
MikeJ
What the hell does that mean?
It means that when people like you open your yap people will point and laugh.
blogreeder
@MikeJ
I knew it, you don’t know what it means either.
bago
What do you mean?
Atanarjuat
It makes sense that Nobama is crooning in Spanish to woo those who find English as too burdensome a language to speak, much less learn — in the United States of America.
(The fact that the Constitution is written in English is irrelevant to diehard multiculturalists.)
Remember, Nobama is the hardcore liberal who had said the following:
"Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English, they will learn English. You need to make sure your child can speak Spanish."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZprtPat1Vk
It makes one wonder if all the border patrol guards on the American-Mexican border will be pink-slipped enmasse should Nobama become President. Why bother securing the southern border if speaking English will become irrelevant, every one of us will be "re-educated" to speak Spanish, and illegal immigrants — sorry, "undocumented workers" — will be gifted driver’s licenses as an inalienable right?
Now that’s multiculturalism you can believe in, pendejos!
Country First.
El Cid
Blarg flup ewbl Mexicans arthix ‘Nobama’ lakagubl ENGLISH!!!
kid bitzer
yeah, to my ears he sounds *damned* good, as danjoaquinoz says above. like, if that was my mother tongue, i would feel like he was really talking to me, and really understood.
for those who speak neither spanish nor english, here’s some help on the word "transformative".
it’s an adjective, which means "capable of transforming; tending to transform".
"transform" is a rough synonym for "change".
so a "socially transformative figure" is someone who can change society.
it’s not that hard, if you know english.
if you don’t then maybe this will help. cambio: si, se puede.
boonagain
Hey, trolls,instead of bothering us, you really, really need to be out there working for McCain-seems he just now realized that Bush’s Presidency has been bad for the Country. That realization should help him a lot with his base.
Josh Hueco
And the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, so from now on the ofays should only talk about stoning gays and how the earth is 6,000 years old in the original language. They might also learn that YHWH ashwer YHWH means "I am that what I am" instead of DUH LORRRD-UHH!
BladeZero
Now that’s a guy you want meeting with other nations!
Caramon
I’m Spanish.
Very nice effort from Obama. ‘pr’ looks to be the only sound where he really has a problem.
cleek
praise be to Popeye
kommrade jakevich
@Josh Hueco: Or as Lewis Black says, they should use their own Bible (New Testament) and leave the Jewish Bible alone.
And they can talk about forgiveness and turning the other cheek in Aramaic, Greek, … Ah, forget it. That’ll never happen.
Krista
Even if he had mangled the language, IMHO the fact that he gave it such an effort, and is really trying to reach out to all aspects of your society, is very heartening. I think this is a guy who sees people as people, not as "groups to suck up to", "groups to give lip service to" and "groups to ignore".
(My apologies for ending the first two group names with prepositions. I tried writing it correctly, and it just looked really awkward.)
cleek
no apologies necessary; it’s perfectly valid to do so.
kommrade jakevich
"This is the sort of English up with which I will not put".
Comrade Nixon Hailfire Palin
Can’t resist the Churchill quote here: "This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."
Punchy
No Habla Espany’all.
Cant wait to see Obitler cut one of these treasonous ads in goosestepping German.
Punchy
Another Grammar Nazi. Nice. You’re someone for whom I would vote. Your style is one for which I am familiar. This is something with which I would agree.
Nicole
He speaks Spanish with a strong Muslim accent.
El Cruzado
As another resident Spaniard, he gets an A for effort and a B for implementation. A verbe tense wrong somewhere and the cadence goes off in a couple places and a few things that sound odd but just because even after a few years living in the US I’m still not completely used to hispanic-american use of the language.
But overall it sure beats most Spanish politicians speaking English (ex-president Aznar provokes irrepressible hilarity on me every time I hear him speaking English for some reason).
Comrade Stuck
What’s a preposition? Is that like L Craig with crazy feet.
charlotte
Wow — I just LOVE seeing a candidate making this kind of effort! As a Brazilian-American, I speak Portuguese, but understand Spanish with ease. His pronunciation isn’t perfect but it’s very very good … and his cadences aren’t bad either. And here’s the main thing: He MADE the effort and looks relaxed and happy doing so. Si se puede and Sim, Podemos! Barack is the man!
The matter of prepositions is one with which I am familiar. I think in writing something formal or bureaucratic it’s probably the way to go, no? But, heaven forbid that bloggers should have this rule thrust upon them … what’s the fun of that? Relaxe, pessoal … vamos numa boa!
Tzal
It’s pretty easy to learn another language while campaigning. If you are a genius. An evil genius.
Nylund
He does a good job. He sounds like an American speaking Spanish, but an American who is really trying to speak it properly. I’d think most Spanish speakers would be pleasantly surprised and would instantly recognize and appreciate his effort. This is how most native English speakers who speak solid Spanish (with an accent) end up sounding.
As noted above, it was a bunch of small takes so he probably practiced and recorded one sentence at a time until he got it down pat.
The "I am Barack Obama and I approve this message" part is a different story. It reminds me of when people have those language tapes and they try to repeat what they hear and totally butcher it. He doesn’t outright "butcher" it, but its not nearly as smooth as the rest of the commercial.
AdobeDragon
Bush speaks "Godfather Spanish." Which is to say, he sounds like he has a mouthful of cottonballs in his mouth when he
speaksmangles Spanish.Obama did a pretty good job. As others have noted, the last bit is kind of ugly, but overall he seems to have a good ear for the language.
A la lanterne les aristos!
::waves to El Cruzado::
Yo soy de Malaga :)
pseudonymous in nc
The point about invoking the American Dream: healthcare, education, good jobs? Americans who are more comfortable with Spanish know that for their kids to be part of that deal, they’ll be speaking English. And that it’ll happen anyway for their kids. They’re not stupid.
And he has only himself to blame. He’s created a little nativist enclave for himself on CNN: all of his lead reporters and producers are pretty much confined to his hour of spittle-flecked fearmongering, and his contract gives him editorial control. Ever seen Kitty Pilgrim or Casey Wian show up on CNN outside of Dobbs O’Clock?