[coalminersson]

Seems the military has a good system, but I think they screen those who go to the school. My wife’s sister’s husband was Lt in the Navy. We went to Monterrey to visit. He was in arabic class first day and was trying to read a paper from the middle east. First day assignment. The whole class was in arabic, no english.

He must have had a knack for languages because he was fluent in Vietnamese reading and writing. In the war they put him and his family in a house in Manila and flew him to Saigon every Monday morning. He translated docs.r He did see an “interrogater” take two NV up in a chopper and they pushed one guy out The seocond guy decided to talk.

He beat up my sister-in-law and don’t know where he went from Monterrey. But the school then was total immersion and they started with people with apptitude.

[dfwgator]

Once you learn a language, it means you learn how to learn languages, and can apply those concepts to learning new languages.

The biggest hurdle is learning how to learn a new language.

If you’ve mastered several languages, mastering a new one becomes fairly simple.

I liken it to computer languages, once you learn Java, you can learn C# or Python fairly quickly.

[Myrddin]

The school in Monterey would be a great experience, but at 66 it is unlikely to be part of my life experience. During my years at First Virtual Holdings, I had the pleasure of working with Nathaniel Borenstein. He is the person responsible for creating the MIME specifications that permit embedded images and sounds to be passed via the network. He had studied Hebrew growing up. Sufficient for his bar mitzvah reading of a Torah passage. He decided to step it up with a university course in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was full immersion. Nothing but Hebrew spoken or written in class. Certainly a trial by fire. He succeeded with much effort.