Obamateurism of the Day: OBAMA says he doesn't speak Austrian

hotair.com ^ | April 6, 2009 | Ed Morrissey

[Tolik]

George Bush’s critics rightly roasted him for his tortured syntax and waterboarded grammar, and used it to make the claim that the graduate of both Harvard and Yale was an idiot.  Well, perhaps, but I don’t recall him ever claiming that Austrian was a language.  It takes a highly-esteemed intellect, it seems, to miss the fact that Austrians mainly speak German:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr7zhnctF4c

 

Obama: It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics.

Austrians speak German and Italian primarily, as well as French — and I’m sure some Austrians speak languages ranging from Albanian to Swahili, being an intelligent and cultured people. However, none of the speak Austrian, because it doesn’t exist.

I got a deluge of e-mails on this, so thanks to all who sent the tip.  Other bloggers on this Obamateurism:

• American Thinker
• Jim Treacher’s Twitter message
• Josh Painter

Update: LGF claims they have a clip of Bush bowing to Abdullah, but he’s actually bending down to receive a medal from the Saudi king.  Bush is much taller than Abdullah, which would have made it impossible for Abdullah to get the medal around his neck otherwise.  We can question whether Bush should have accepted a medal from the Saudis, but he wasn’t greeting Abdullah with a bow.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at obamaisms@edmorrissey.com with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day.

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Barcepundit: OBAMA SAYS he doesn't speak Austrian. It's unknown if he can speak Argentinean or Brazilian but, to his credit, his American is way better than his English.

[Jonny foreigner]

C’mon now...think about it...”Toy Story”...Mr. Potatohead... the similarities are striking...
But “Scheisskopf”...hmm...yeah, I guess I can see that too...
Maybe “der grosse bescheuert scheisskopf”

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the problem is you can´t translate one to one from english into german. it sometimes doesn´t makes sense. true potato head means translated into german exactly “Kartoffelkopf” but i never heard some one say you are a “kartoffelkopf” not even as an insult. for “scheißkopf” (sh$thead) i did hear this german insult once in my lifetime but it´s not really common here to say this. *lol* “der große bescheuerte Scheißkopf”? maybe you will earn some irritated looks for this or maybe a good laugh because people would think you are confused because it sounds laughable :-) but then again don´t give up *lol* arschloch = a$$hole is pretty common here. and the good old “F.ck You” in german (fick dich) btw. both the english and the german version are very common here ;-) will do the job just fine anyway.
greetings

[madison10]

Probably doesn’t speak German either.

[Vinnie]

Obama is the biggest scam artist in all of human history!

The MSM perpetuates him.
Were they doing their unbiased job he would be toast.

Same with clinton.
Without the MSM clinton would have been just another lying huckster.

[Jonny foreigner]

I wish Zero would go to Switzerland and mention that he does not speak “Swiss.” heh heh......

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i hate do do this but for Obamas defence. it´s virtually impossible to understand each other (if it´s not written down) for example our tv usually uses subtitles if they interview some one from the swiss who talks in his local slang. so we all could follow. so austria, germany and the swiss do officially speak german. but this only means that we are all capable to somehow understand each other. (differs from region to region). but it sometimes takes great efforts for every part to stay on course and talk in so called “high german”. even then some terms differ from time to time but at the end we are able to talk to each other if we only want :-) so we official share the same language but you will really have a hard time to understand each other.

[Jonny foreigner]

btw. message to Obama. come one it´s not that hard, jfk managed it so “yes we can” (you too if you only would try)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pjn5E6yOKo&feature=related

Jfk ich bin ein berliner. not austrian but still german ;-)

[LurkedLongEnough]

Grüß Gott!

[Jonny foreigner]

*lol* nur mehr deutsch sprechende da? schaut irgendwie so aus :-)

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only german speaking people left? because it looks like this way :-)

[x]

There's also this:

However, Friedrich Heer, one the most important Austrian historians in the 20th century, stated in his book Der Kampf um die österreichische Identität (The Struggle Over Austrian Identity), that the Germanic form ostarrîchi was not a translation of the Latin word, but both resulted from a much older term originating in the Celtic languages of ancient Austria: More than 2,500 years ago, the major part of the actual country was called Norig by the Celtic population (Hallstatt culture); No- or Nor- meant East or Eastern, whereas Rig is the related to the modern German Reich; realm (among other things). Accordingly, Norig would essentially mean ostarrîchi and Österreich, thus Austria. The Celtic name was eventually Latinized to noricum, when the Romans conquered and Romanized the country that later became Austria. The name of Noricum was then used to designate the Roman province.

According to Herr, originally Österreich comes from Celtic words meaning "Eastern Realm or Kingdom."

I don't know if that's true, but the Ostara theory has a Nazi ring to it. Ostara was the name of a magazine that may have influenced Hitler.

The reference to Latin is interesting: "Austria" comes from the Latin word for "South", even though the Germanic and Celtic names (and Noricum, which the Romans called the area) had nothing to do with anything Southern.

[ccmay]

i guess we will never know for shure. but then again who really cares. i still like living here.

Now, that's a good attitude. I'm not surprised that you like it there.

How did you discover our little right-wing American playground?

-ccm

[Victoria Delsoul]

What an idiot. I guarantee you'll never hear/read this in the MSM. If a Republican said this, you'd hear it about it for decades a la Dan Quayle...

Unfortunately, a great number of people usually just repeat what they hear in the media. So Sarah is stupid and Obama is smart, when in reality if we put all the Obama's gaffes together and keep repeating them to the public over and over again, everybody will come to realize that Obama is indeed dumb.

[neverdem]

This narcissist is so full of himself that he doesn’t realize his ignorance is on full display for all the world to see. Fasten your seatbelt.

If you have a ping list, please used it. I just used all of mine.

[Arizona Carolyn]

He would be much better off to not speak since he clearly has no sense of American History and keeps repeating his perverted version of such... clearly he doesn’t understand they speak several different languages in Austria — but but “Austrian”

[Chode]

funny, neither do the Austrians...

[HereInTheHeartland]

“Obamateurism of the Day: OBAMA says he doesn't speak Austrian”

People are to hard on him.
The Teleprompter software hadn't been upgraded to Service Pack 4.1, which contains the Austrian language translation software.
The Australian language is also included in Service pack 4.1. These updates were created specifically for our new President.

[BlueAngel]

Thanks for the ping neverdem. I still cannot believe this person, that I shall not name, is the president. I wish that I could wake up and it all would have been a nightmare.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[an amused spectator]

*lol* i´m austrian too and even i don´t speak austrian.

"Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz's lawn jockey doesn't speak Austrian" ping...

[an amused spectator]

And the real world provides schemers and intrigants that can and will eat Obama for breakfast. As Chicago machine had an advantage over less skillful players, its not a match against people that came to power in the jungles of Kremlin, Peking, Tehran, Pyongyang.

Obama is living a book called The Dosadi Experiment.

He's just more brillianter than the rest of us peasants...

[an amused spectator]

Obama: Austrian for “retard”...

[an amused spectator]

Donkey shins...