Uzbek or Dari? Military learns new tongues

Christian Science Monitor ^ | 01/02/04 | Ann Scott Tyson

[Support Free Republic]

Rank	Location	Receipts	Donors/Avg		Freepers/Avg		Monthlies
45	South Dakota	20.00	1	20.00	44	0.45	30.00	2

Thanks for donating to Free Republic!

Move your locale up the leaderboard!

[Miss Marple]

How are you going to decide who is trustworthy?

The Defense Language Institute is expert at teaching languages in a short period. My first husband was a graduate of the Russian program, and was quite fluent in Russian by the time he graduated.

[Spruce]

My daughter is there now studying Mandarin.

[Dogbert41]

I graduated the basic russian course back in 86. It was tough, I'll tell ya, and that was before all this nice equipement and the internet. DLI in Monterey was one heck of a nice place to live though. Wish I were younger to do it all over again, only in one of the Arabic languages or Persian...

As for hiring trustworthy natives, when dealing with intel, there's only trustworthy Americans who have passed a background investgation and received proper clearances. That's just life. And what you get in return is one well trained professional soldier, airmen, marine or sailer.

[Professional Engineer]

ping

[Seselj]

I've always wanted to learn Russian. How long did it take you to learn it?

[Miss Marple]

Exactly my point. We can't know about native language speakers; Americans can be thoroughly investigated.

I myself was the subject of an investigation due to my marriage. They even interviewed my grandmother.

[nuconvert]

Good For You! Congratulations!

[billorites]

"I graduated the basic Russian course back in 86. It was tough, I'll tell ya"

Central Asian languages and Arabic is where the action is these days.

If a youngster wanted to be on the fast track, that's what I'd recommend they study.

People who spend the next couple years in Uzbekistan, or some such place, are the people who'll will have stories to tell their kids and grandkids.

[klute]

I prefer Dari

[Criminal Number 18F]

The problem is in peacetime the military cuts the hell out of this program. Generals who majored in football in college see it as a frill. Then they find themselves in command of a task force in Wayoutistan and all they have is local interpreters, all of whom come with an agenda that, whatever it is, isn't American.

At this point General Tailback starts screaming for GI linguists, only to find the Army doesn't have any. Or he gets one, so that he can get his restaurant menus translated, but the MPs at the gate of the base and the SF teams out in the boonies have to rely on local hires.

They never learn. After 1989, they very quickly dismantled an excellent series of programs in Eastern European languages. In the late nineties, those nations joined NATO or Partnership for Peace and we had linguistic problems again.

Then, the military takes the graduates and in many cases assigns them to duties that have little bearing on their language skill. A foreign language is a skill that erodes quickly if not maintained. Some leaders think that when their linguists are reading foreign-language papers or magazines, or watching a foreign movie, they are "wasting time" and they'd rather see them in the motor pool packing wheel bearings -- real soldier's work. So the retention of linguists is probably the lowest of any speciality in the military, even though they have some of the longest training (over a year, minimum) and to pass the school need to have high test scores.

There is no royal road to foreign language skills. Especially in a society like ours that does not value foreign languages and that has mostly purged them from the public schools. You need a long and intensive course like this, or total immersion in the language for many months, or both.

And then, because things change, unless you train a wide range of language skills, and not just those that are involved in the immediate crisis, you still risk having the wrong linguists.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Criminal Number 18F]

Seselj,

The DLI Russian Basic Course was 47 training weeks long when I was there (although not for Russian). It might be a few weeks longer now -- it adds up to a whole year spent studying. It gets people to a basic level of proficiency, depending on their aptitude and motivation. You can converse on just about any subject, you can read most materials and understand them.

Most of the courses at DLI are aimed at providing reading and listening proficiency, rather than speaking and writing (which is tougher). There are specialty courses, say for interrogators, that stress the spoken language.

For civilians that want to learn a language, the best way (IMHO) is total immersion. Among schools & universities in the USA, Brigham Young University stands out, although the caffeine-free campus is a heavy cross to bear if you don't share their LDS faith.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Criminal Number 18F]

One thing I didn't mention, unlike university instructors, most DLI instructors are native speakers of the target language. That is a very important thing. During the 80s there were so many Russian classes that some of the Russian instructors were experienced military linguists.

Parents with service age, bright kids -- this is a good program. All four services send people here, albeit for different languages and different purposes. A majority of the graduates will work in some aspect of intelligence collection or analysis -- they might wind up with stories they can't tell the grandkids.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Steel Wolf]

I've been to DLI a few times and been trained in other languages. I highly recommend it as a career path and as horizon broadening experience.

Milestones of language study.

- Dreaming in a foriegn language, with better vocab and grammar than I had when I was awake.

- Listening to someone speak in another language not realizing that it's wasn't English until they switched back to English.

- Answering a question reflexively in target language and then being amazed at what came out your mouth.

That doesn't even get into the joys of travelling in a country where almost no foriegners speak the local language. (Or some of the more interesting job related uses)

[Steel Wolf]

Central Asian languages and Arabic is where the action is these days.

I guessed wrong, back when they phased my old language out. I decided to jump ship to either Chinese or Arabic. At the time, I figured, man, Arabic is old news, China is where the action's gonna be.

That was in the late 90's. Who knew? Of course, for the longer term Chinese is a smarter move, but I had all but flipped a coin to make my decision.

[Criminal Number 18F]

To your milestones I'd add:

- Knowing a word in one of your foreign languages, and not being able to think of it in English.

- Asking a question of a local, who detects your accent and answers in flawless English -- then turning to the companion for whom you're translating, and saying "He said..." and repeating what the bemused local just told you both.

- Being at an Ambassador's residence and speaking English, Dutch , French, German and Czech all in one evening, astonishing all the FSOs who thought you were a knuckle-dragging trigger mechanic.

- Replying to a question in the wrong foreign language, and not realising it until the puzzled look of your questioner implants on your brain.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Steel Wolf]

The Mandarin Chinese course is one of the better run schools there, and if she applies herself I'm sure your daughter will have a pretty solid basis in Chinese at the end of her 63 weeks.

[mikrofon]

This well-known actress is half-Persian, speaks fluent Parsi (Farsi), and would likely make a fine instructor...