Posted on 01/07/2006 12:19:10 AM PST by nickcarraway
On the other hand, like pearls before swine, the effort might be interpretted by the Asian world as an American attempt to patronize their religious beliefs.
Considering training can be half of the service life of a SpecOps operator and pay may not be competitive to the private sector. Both early training and retention is paramount for the DoD.
In business or espionage, it helps to know the language of who you are dealing with. And don't give me that BS about "English being the universal language."
The parochialism of Americans when it comes to learning other languages is asinine.
Slightly over 50% of our foreign trade is with four countries (Canada, Mexico, China, and Japan). Sure, Canada has Quebec, but the Quebecois (sp) don't exactly dominate the business community there.
Wrong! Another example of short-sighted petty critics not understanding strategic planning.
This is from the Hindustan Times, written by who knows? It is written from a local perspective and as a result sounds very strange. Some of the quotes are probably for real, taken out of context and only reflect a small percentage of the truth.
Mostly this article is nonsense.
Why bother learning Russian? According to their birthrate, there will only be around $80 million Russians in 50 years.
The only people needing to know Arabic are those who read bombing maps.
It is silly to teach American kids Hindi, when India is teaching every single child English, in addition to the hundreds of millions there who already speak it. Chinese makes sense.
Arabic phrases such as "put your hands over your head and interlock your fingers" and "take off the explosives belt" would be useful I suppose, but otherwise a waste of time.
Sticky keys, eh?
Of course our kids have got to learn hindi, how else will they understand all of the instructions of the "help lines" that have been outsourced to India!
WTF is GOING ON in this frickin' country!
If we do NOT put an end to the Bush/Klinton trade-off cabal...we will ALL be THIRD class citizens in our own country...as we already ARE Second Class behind the Ruling Eeee-lites that are selling us all out to the Illegals and the business lobby and the other ba$tards that want there to be no USA anymore, just one big open area from Panama to the arctic circle that can be exploited!
Hell, we can't get Jose' the Illegal to frickin' learn English (WE have to accomodate THEIR ignorance, and put everything in Spanish in Texas and Florida, along with other places)...now the Gub'Mint is demanding we edjumicate American kids in these other frickin' languages?
Ahem...English IS the language of commerce, and the airlines MUST have all pilots and Control Tower personnel be fluent in English...so why the "F'n Kerry" do we always have to BOHICA for these ba$tards? I'm TIRED of having my tax $$ taken for translators, and to print ballots and license aplications, as well as all the Gub'Mint documents like applying for FRICKIN Welfare in multiple languages!
You want my $$$...learn the FRICKIN ENGLISH LANGUAGE! Then I can say "NO", and you'll understand me!
Tancredo/Pence/Coulter/Malkin/Levin...these are the names that can stop the insanity!
Just say NO to the R(I)N(O)C BS, and never again another Bush, or anyone Bush backs for that matter!
It's called globalism and you will not be allowed off the train.
I made a mistake. Devanagari runs left to right. I had also made a correction.
Roger that. I completely agree that we tend to shortchange American kids with regard to language proficiency. Foreign language study teaches more than just the language itself. In many ways it even reinforces an understanding of language construction and makes a person a better English speaker, as well as a better foreign language speaker.
We should still be teaching Latin, for that reason. Not that Latin itself is going to be used but because it backs up and expands an understanding of how language is constructed and why.
A re-think of which languages are commonly offered in schools and for how many years is a good idea. There's just no reason to still be concentrating on French and German at the expense of some much more interesting and useful languages.
I don't speak Arabic, but I wish I did. I've started reading some books on it... not so much to learn the language but to learn about it. With Arabic especially, understanding the language is key to understanding how they think. Language and culture are linked and influence each other.
Arabic-speaking places are going to be places of intense national interest, and at times adversaries, for the forseeable future. Understanding them will be key to our success, as always.
For example: I've learned that Arabic has no emphasis on tenses. Past-present-future verb forms are not rigid meanings like western languages. An action in the future or past is expressed much the same as an action now. Think about how this mere fact affects and forms Arab thought, and how it was that Arab thought formed in such a way that the language would have developed in this manner. It's staggering and illuminating all at once.
This is nothing but wholesale diversity tolerance indoctrination if implemented in K-12 education.
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