“Intelligence can save Marines’ lives and give us the advantage on the battlefield,” said Cpl. William Woodall, 26, of Dallas, who works closely with translators. “Instead of looking for quality, the companies are just pushing bodies out here, and once they’re out the door, it’s not their problem anymore.”[...]The company that recruits most U.S. citizen translators, Columbus, Ohio-based Mission Essential Personnel, says it’s difficult to meet the increased demand for linguists to aid the 15,000 U.S. forces being sent to southern, Pashto-speaking provinces this year as part of President Barack Obama’s increased focus on Afghanistan. Only 7,700 Pashto speakers live in the U.S., according to the 2000 census. (Emphasis mine)
Remarkable, isn’t it? It’s been almost eight years since 9/11 and the United States still has a critical strategic deficit when it comes to languages. Practically no progress has happened in all this time. America’s proud linguistic ignorance wins again. We’re monolingual and damn proud of it.
Yes, languages are hard to learn. Because it is so very different from Indo-European tongues, the Defense Language Institute Basic Arabic Course lasts 63 weeks. That’s eight hours of daily immersion for fifteen months. But like any language, Arabic is replete with cultural variances and complexities; to really learn it, you must live in it awhile.
Urdu, Pashto, and Farsi are actually less difficult than Arabic, but are even less available for study in America. And to date, only a handful of high school and college Arabic programs exist; there’s hardly any real effort out there to educate students in languages that matter.
The most common foreign language secondary students learn is still French. Not that I’m anti-French, but when was the last time America sent thousands of French speakers to war?
