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2005-04-29 Home Front: WoT

Speak another language? Volunteer to help your country

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Posted by trailing wife 2005-04-29 3:13:44 PM|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 folks at the triple rock baptist church need to know about this

Posted by half 2005-04-29 3:56:49 PM|| 2005-04-29 3:56:49 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 Like many promising ideas, this one has been languishing for months while Congress attends to business presumably more urgent than national security.

Like steroid use by professional athletes.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-04-29 3:59:46 PM|| 2005-04-29 3:59:46 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 Another alternative is to wait till the need arises and then advertise and pay the relevant individuals A LOT of money for their skill. I suspect it soule be cheaper than setting up a registry bureaucracy to run for ever and ever.

Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-04-29 4:25:12 PM|| 2005-04-29 4:25:12 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 Have they considered finding people via bloggers?

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-29 4:29:10 PM|| 2005-04-29 4:29:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 I've been trying to volunteer for something like this for years. I was on my old PD's list for Russian speakers, and was called out for Spanish speaking details lots of times.

If there is anything that comes down, I'd love to do it (can't join the military....asthma, the same reason Dad was turned down in WW2).

I'm dead serious. If anyone here finds out about something like this, lemme know. Hell, I'd even be willing to try to learn another one.

(I'm just one of those lucky little twerps who pick up languages much more easily than the average. Went to Germany, didn't speak any German, within a week I was having basic conversations in the stores & restaurants in Stuttgart. Even handled the post office & rail station.)

Posted by Desert Blondie 2005-04-29 4:50:59 PM|| [http://azjetsetchick.blogspot.com] 2005-04-29 4:50:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Might wanna think about this from a braoder perspective, too-an Arabic, Chinese or Pashtu class would be every bit as practical as a geometry class for some students. It depends largely on natural aptitude and an earlier opportunity to learn another in-demand language. When I was in high school, you did have to take a foreign language (Spanish, German, French or Latin). Obviously, the selection of languages offered in public schools needs some major tweaking. Any changes falling under the aegis of education, though, would likely take years and years of union haggling and major educational bigwig buttkissing. In one respect, I like the model that Germany used to have (I don't know if they still have it) where you choose earlier on in life the track you are best suited for-language study or physical fitness, engineering versus art, etc. If kids were taught the languages rather than adults, we'd see quicker and longer lasting language learning, and youthful graduates with lots of energy and new ideas to tap in to.

Once again, poor foresight and planning has us trying to catch up too late.

Posted by jules 187 2005-04-29 5:23:07 PM|| 2005-04-29 5:23:07 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Learning a foreign language might be fun (to those who enjoy it), but it is largely a waste of time. However, I think it might be useful to recruit first generation immigrants (born here, but parents of foreign origin), who speak a foreign language, but don't necessarily have much of a vocabulary or write it. They would probably pick it any additional bits of the language much faster than someone coming into a language program cold.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2005-04-29 5:39:26 PM|| [http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2005-04-29 5:39:26 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 MD: Another alternative is to wait till the need arises and then advertise and pay the relevant individuals A LOT of money for their skill.

This is probably the best idea of the lot.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2005-04-29 5:41:03 PM|| [http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2005-04-29 5:41:03 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 someone pass this on to Mucky

Posted by Frank G 2005-04-29 5:54:25 PM|| 2005-04-29 5:54:25 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 The problem is MESA (Middle East Studies Association, which is semi-Islamist) is undercutting the effort to get more 'Mericans trained in Arabic and such. This is due to the belief that these newly trained folks will be used to better fight our enemy,

Posted by Brett 2005-04-29 6:33:48 PM|| 2005-04-29 6:33:48 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 I took French in High School but it was mostly wasted. I took Spanish in college and had more success (I'm conversant in Spanish). Teaching methods were a factor but the big difference is that I went to Mexico on a home stay for a few months.

Many American students, like me, never leave the U.S. Or if they do, they go with their families and stay in big international hotels where everyone speaks English. Until you first find (or put) yourself in a situation where your're surrounded by people talking in a foreign language, your motivation to work at it remains weak. In high school, repeating French dialog was mostly a joke and no one was going to humiliate themselves by trying to work on French-ifying their pronounciation.

But once you have success with one language, the whole concept of learning a foreign language opens up and starts making sense. It's much easier to pick up a 3rd language - providing that you're not too old. Japanese is supposedly much more difficult than Spanish but I found it to be easier. I started learning at age 22 which is much too old to ever become a full native speaker but I am pretty advanced and I can read the newspaper.

Posted by John in Tokyo 2005-04-29 6:38:50 PM|| 2005-04-29 6:38:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 I wonder if they will still have that 'NO JEWS NEED APPLY!!!' policy which the FBI has had for years (and may well still have...)

Posted by CrazyFool 2005-04-29 6:53:42 PM|| 2005-04-29 6:53:42 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 The FBI is a borken organization when it comes to intel. Thats why every time I get a chance, I say its intel functions (as well as those of ATF and Border Patrol) should be transferred to a seperate domestic intel aganecy, maybe under DHS, and become a close cousin of the Coast Guard (like that Army/Navy/AF relationship to the CIA via DIA/NSA).

I dont know about languages being a waste of time ZF. I learned German growing up, Russian in my teens, Arabic in my 20's and picked up a smattering of Japanese, Greek, etc depending on where life took me. I got a lot of the culture with each of these languages, which made me better at intelligence work when I needed to get inside the other guys' heads. Arabic was the toughest - studying Islam, and several versions of the history of the region helped a lot. My wife, who learned Hungarian growing up (family language like my German was), and German at DLI (like my Arabic), plus the Russian every good intel analyst picked up in the Cold War (and a smattering of Arabic and Japanese from me), also things learning languages is valuable. Know your enemy. Right now the only thing Im still halfway decent is German, with some Arabic and Japanese (from helping son with homework).

My son learned German growing up (much the way I did), is completing 3 years of Japanese in High School, and is now looking to do 2 years of Chinese before enlisting in the Navy or Marine Corps (finish his degree in the service, then on his way to a 3 letter agency after that, like his old man and mom)

Oh, and that doesnt count the Spanish we all pick up in order to be able to order stuff at the fast-food drive through.

So langauges are valuable, in and of themselves - makes yoru brain work harder and establish analytical power in order to acquire and process a different language. Or at least thats my opinion.

Posted by OldSpook 2005-04-29 7:24:21 PM|| 2005-04-29 7:24:21 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 With all the difficulties in getting the locals to support the taxes that pay for school funding (at least in my area), there's absolutely no way we could get additional funding for additional language studies at the high school level. However, there is no reason motivated high school students couldn't take a class in one of the more exotic languages at a nearby college -- and even apply the earned college credits toward a college degree. As John says, the third language is easier, which would offset the challenges inherent in working at a post-secondary level. And it would be fairly simple to set up a system of Federal grants/loans for a student (high school or college) to take a college course in the target languages, say Arabic (including subsequent work in mutually unintelligible regional dialects), Pashto, Kurdish, Turkish, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese to begin with), Farsi, and perhaps Malay.

John, from what I've heard, not all educated Japanese can read the newspapers, because of the two writing sets (the one that is like Chinese pictographs, and the one where the signs stand for sounds (Kenji?)). So I'm impressed!

DB, the problem with the German early tracking system is that the kids are generally herded onto the track that will have them end up like their parents, with little regard to individual ability. So, the kids of blue collar workers end up on the technical track, while the kids of managers go to college. Which is one reason German mechanics are so good, but unfortunately doesn't speak to the caliber to those that spend a decade or more in the university system.

Posted by trailing wife 2005-04-29 7:30:59 PM|| 2005-04-29 7:30:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 My apologies -- I have no idea why the paragraph responding to jules was addressed to Desert Blondie. Early senility, perhaps. ;-)

Posted by trailing wife 2005-04-29 7:34:38 PM|| 2005-04-29 7:34:38 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 language-learning is a special skill and my hat's off to those of you, including Fred, who've excelled at it. I'm linguistically challenged unless immersed... couple weeks in Yucatan/Merida and I finally quit thinking in English

Posted by Frank G 2005-04-29 7:38:16 PM|| 2005-04-29 7:38:16 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 Some of the (computer) DVD-based language courses are pretty good. For $350, you can get the first two levels of a 4 level course in Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin, and a lot of other languages. These are a little light on formal grammar, good for conversational vignettes and include video of conversations that include native speakers with characteristic body language. The Rosetta Stone courses are some of the better ones.

Posted by too true 2005-04-29 9:00:18 PM|| 2005-04-29 9:00:18 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 TW, you would be hard put to FIND college courses in Pasto, Kurdish or Malay in any but a very few venues - if at all. Turkish at a few schools.

A lot depends on what you want to accomplish. Getting by as a tourist is one thing, translating texts is another and having cultural familiarity is a third thing yet.

Old Spook, I agree with you about the value of learning - AND USING - languages other than English. There are many concepts and ways of looking at the world embedded in other languages that do not lend themselves to easy translation ... it takes being in the culture or reading the literature a bit to really understand the impact of what is being said sometimes.

Posted by too true 2005-04-29 9:04:57 PM|| 2005-04-29 9:04:57 PM|| Front Page Top

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