National Security Language Initiative

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Anthea et al.

Probably the reason for Hindi and not Urdu is just ignorance. They already
have made Urdu a very high priority, and I was told by a Defense Language
Institute person a couple of years ago that they could usefully employ
"every graduate knowing Arabic, Punjabi, Urdu, and Pashto" that we
produce.  Hmmm.  I told the man that the only Pashto speakers we had were
employed at sandwich carts along Spruce Street here; some months later a
rumor surfaced that they had hired our Spruce Street sandwich men, which
of course wasn't true (they're still making sandwiches in their regular
carts; a couple of them have tried to teach me how to say "Give me a
chicken sandwich" in Pashto.)

But as usual with government initiatives like this, one hand doesn't know
what the other is doing. A son of a friend of ours is studying Uzbek at a
well-known midwestern university, and has yet to receive any fellowship
support...

The National Defense Education Act, from back in the Eisenhower era,
passed because of sputnik, did, despite government priorities, result in a
lot of people (like me) studying languages they wouldn't otherwise have
been able to.

Hal


Harold F. Schiffman


On Tue, 10 Jan 2006, Anthea Fraser Gupta wrote:

> "Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Persian, Hindi, and Central Asian languages."
>
> "An essential component of U.S. national security in the post-9/11
> world is the ability to engage foreign governments and peoples,
> especially in critical regions, to encourage reform, promote
> understanding, convey respect for other cultures and provide an
> opportunity to learn more about our country and its citizens."
>
> Hm. The aim of learning languages is to promote change in other cultures
> and 'convey respect' [for them?], and help them to learn about the US.
> Nothing about understanding the cultures.
>
> This is a geographically relatively continguous group reflecting the
> current region of major US interests. But why Hindi and not Urdu as well
> (are there already plenty of Urdu specialists?)? Arabic and
> Persian/Farsi but not Turkish?
>
> Anthea
>
>
> *     *     *     *     *
> Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
> School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
> <www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
> NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
> *     *     *     *     *
>
>