Army tells gay translators: don't tell, or don't translate

[Joel S. Berson]

Kevin, I got it OK, so it seems to depend on the receiver.  But in
any case, defaulting to plain text is courteous.

Joel

At 5/28/2007 03:20 PM, you wrote:
>I'm not sure what happened there. Never seen that before. I'll switch
>it over to plain text. I can't promise that this will have much more
>of a point though.
>
>Here's what I sent:
>
>I used to be a Thai linguist when I was in the Air Force. Learning the
>alphabet for Thai really wasn't that hard really. The first few weeks
>of classes involved using  a kind of phonetic spelling until the
>student was able to easily read the Thai alphabet.  Since Thai is a
>phonetic alphabet with about 80 characters (it's been over 20 years, I
>can't remember the exact number and don't want to look it up,) it
>wasn't that difficult to learn and was definitely  needed in order to
>fully understand the language.  The only thing that I noticed after
>learning Thai and using it every day for three years was that my
>English spelling skills suffered horribly.  Fortunately, spell check
>was just a couple of years away, and all was right with the world
>again!
>
>I knew a couple of Farsi linguists at the time, and from what I
>remember, learning the alphabet wasn't the difficult part there
>either.  They'd already taken tests to show that they had a talent for
>learning languages so learning however many symbols they needed to
>learn the language came easy. Not so much for the Chinese linguists,
>but for languages with an alphabet, not a big issue.
>
>Like Wilson said though, given the investment that the government has
>to put into these soldiers, it seems foolish to kick out a herd of
>them just because they choose a lifestyle that can no longer be used
>as a tool in blackmail. I do remember that once you got on the job,
>the linguist were punished more severely for things that might have
>been either overlooked or handled verbally.  I don't know for sure why
>that is, but I suspect that they don't do enough stupid things that
>start out with the phrase "Hey. watch this!" to get them into trouble
>that they early 80's standard airman might do. I could be wrong
>though. It's just a theory.
>
>Kevin
>
>
>
>On 5/28/07, Scot LaFaive <spiderrmonkey at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Scot LaFaive <spiderrmonkey at HOTMAIL.COM>
>>Subject:      Re: Army tells gay translators: don't tell, or don't translate
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>I'm not sure I see your point...
>>
>>Scot LaFaive
>>
>>
>> >From: Kevin Birge <kevin at FRONTSTRETCH.COM>
>> >Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> >Subject: Re: Army tells gay translators: don't tell, or don't translate
>> >Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 14:41:04 -0400
>> >
>> >---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> >-----------------------
>> >Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> >Poster:       Kevin Birge <kevin at FRONTSTRETCH.COM>
>> >Subject:      Re: Army tells gay translators: don't tell, or don't
>> >translate
>> >------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -------------
>>snip giberrish
>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org