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View Full Version : Which foreign language will be most valuable in the next 20 years?



Schmedlap
08-16-2009, 06:25 AM
To a young college student who has an interest in contemporary issues in the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan region – but no particular preference regarding any country – which foreign language/country studies would you recommend that he/she study if the intent is to play a role in the major national security challenges of the next generation? (At least the largest challenges among the locales applicable to the languages given).

This is kind of a crystal ball question, since the answer depends on how you expect us to leverage our national power in those regions. I was recently asked this by a college junior (in the fall) who is considering pursuing OCS, State, or CIA. (My first question was to ask him, “you realize those are three different universes, right?”). I gave him my rationale – which is paraphrased below. I also made it abundantly clear to him that I have no idea what I am talking about and that he would be wise to ask his professors.

For my pick, I am thinking Urdu. Pakistan has nukes. Even if we miraculously manage to extract ourselves from Afghanistan, we’ll still be knee deep in Pakistani security issues.

Runner-up – I’m thinking Arabic. We’ll be living, working, and operating in the Arabic-speaking countries for a long time. Kuwait may as well be a PCS (maybe it already is?).

I suspect that Dari and Pashtu will become exponentially less critical as we search for ways to escape from Afghanistan. There seem to be a lot of Indians who speak English, so I’m also thinking not Hindi. Iran may become as problematic as Pakistan, due to its pursuit of nukes and possible internal instability, but I don’t think we’ll have as much dialogue with them as with the Pakistanis – so not Farsi.

Thoughts?

William F. Owen
08-16-2009, 09:25 AM
Nothing wrong with being prepared, but beware that by implication, you are attempting to predict, as concerns, not IF you will fight, but WHERE and against WHOM, you will fight.

I watched the British Army guess wrong on, going for Chinese and Spanish in 1989, to needing Arabic in 91, then needing Serbo-Croat from 1992-98 , then no competent speakers of any indigenous West African language for Sierra Leone (bar 1 x Nigerian officer Cadet), then back to Arabic in 2003.

.... and I even spent 2 months learning to read Russian Maps, and transliterate cyrillic ....!

Bob's World
08-16-2009, 09:41 AM
"play a role in the major national security challenges"

If the Middle East is their focus (though our major national security challenges could well be much closer to home to our south, the nearest source of growing instability and migration to the US; or Asia, where the economic focus will continue to shift, with resultant competition at a variety of levels and venues between the US and emerging nations there), Arabic is always a safe bet.

I believe that Iran will re-emerge as the enduring Middle Eastern nation, hopefully as a strong US Ally. If this student is more interested in shaping our future than our past, I would recommend Farsi.

Fuchs
08-16-2009, 10:24 AM
It's fairly easy to narrow the choice of languages for "major national security challenges".

I think so because I do not consider any conflict as a major national security challenge unless it involves nukes or a country that neighbours the own alliance. Nuclear conflict requires no soldier to speak a foreign language.

Therefore I still recommend quite the same basic languages as years ago:

basic:
English - NATO language, understood in much of Africa and elsewhere
Russian - understood at Eastern European NATO frontier
Arabic - Southern European NATO frontier

bonus:
Farsi - SE European NATO frontier
Spanish - Latin America (American NATO frontier)
French - understood in much of Africa (and the French are often poor at English)


The Chinese and Indians can often communicate in English.

About 2,000 words each are a good start. That's 6,000+6,000 words, and you can easily learn ten words a day during breakfast (and two hours weekly for learning how to say them). Two years for basic, two more years for bonus languages.

Americans, Englishmen already know English, the Spanish (and pretty much the Portuguese) as well as many others already know Spanish.

Correct writing in foreign language isn't essential and deserves no emphasis in military language training.

John T. Fishel
08-16-2009, 11:19 AM
is pretty good and his commnents hit the mark. Wilf's caution is wise!;) Nevertheless, the best answer to give to the college student is:
1. choose an area study that is if personal interest, doesn't much matter which.
2. choose the dominant language in that area.
Positive results that come from that approach include the fact that learning a second foreign language is easier than learning the first and the ability to operate cross-culturally tends to transfer from one area to another.

Cheers

JohnT

Van
08-16-2009, 05:16 PM
I'm fairly disappointed that noone has mentioned the language of the fourth most populous country in the world, with the largest Muslim population. Astride a critical maritime line of communication, in possesion of significant oil reserves, (not to mention a source of truly critical resources: coffee and chocolate), Indonesia is a place the U.S. needs to concern itself with, so Bahasa (the Indonesian language) deserves a place on the list.

George L. Singleton
08-16-2009, 06:58 PM
In my opinion as an old Pakistani hand, Urdu is a waste of time. Almost everyone in Pakistan speaks English, whether they can read or write it is another matter.

Arabic makes a lot of sense as long as the oil wells are still pumping.

Pashtu is ethnocentric and those who speak it also are educated in both English and Urdu (in Pakistan) and Dari if in Afghanistan.

Bill Moore
08-16-2009, 08:18 PM
Schmedlap did request we focus on languages specifically for the Middle East and S. Asia (Afghanistan/Pakistan), but when he put the 20 years in the future qualifier on it, I decided to look not just in CENTCOM, but globally (another crystal ball).

Concur with the languages identified for the Middle East, but would weight the effort on Persian and Arabic (one can argue that Arabic is now a global language due to the global distribution of Islamic schools funded by NGOs from the Middle East).

Concur with Bob's World that the SOUTHCOM AOR is becoming increasingly important for both countering security threats to our nation and facilitating our economic interests, so I suspect that Spanish and Portuguese will "remain" important.

China and India will remain strategic players, so Chinese is a must add, but since India has several languages, to include English I wouldn't invest too much time learning Hindi.

In Europe it is hard to say. For Africa French, Portuguese, and Arabic will probably remain the key languages (in addition to English).

I agree with WILF, we can make a "guess", but we'll never know with any degree of certainty. Unfortunately, language training is an investment that takes considerable time to see a return on, so we're forced to use our crystal ball and make the best quessimate possible before we invest resources, and after we invest we then we cross our fingers and hope we got it right. If not, we do what we have always done, we scramble to try to get it right.

Fuchs
08-16-2009, 08:33 PM
I'm fairly disappointed that noone has mentioned the language of the fourth most populous country in the world, with the largest Muslim population. Astride a critical maritime line of communication, in possesion of significant oil reserves, (not to mention a source of truly critical resources: coffee and chocolate), Indonesia is a place the U.S. needs to concern itself with, so Bahasa (the Indonesian language) deserves a place on the list.

Indonesia is interesting to Australia, maybe New Zealand and a tiny bit the UK.
Other 'Western' countries do not need to be interested in Indonesia.

It's at the other end of the world. Globalization or not - invasion over thousands of miles is no form of defence.

Taiko
08-16-2009, 10:19 PM
.It's at the other end of the world.

How does the old saying go. You might not be interested in how international terrorists networks work in Indonesia and S-E Asia, but they are interested in you. Let us also not forget that 9/11 was co-ordinated via Malaysia.

Schmedlap
08-16-2009, 10:41 PM
Good feedback.


The Chinese and Indians can often communicate in English... Correct writing in foreign language isn't essential and deserves no emphasis in military language training.

Not Hindi


Almost everyone in Pakistan speaks English... Pashtu is ethnocentric...

Not Urdu
Not Pashtu


one can argue that Arabic is now a global language due to the global distribution of Islamic schools funded by NGOs from the Middle East).

Arabic, check


... since India has several languages, to include English I wouldn't invest too much time learning Hindi.

Not Hindi


... learning a second foreign language is easier than learning the first and the ability to operate cross-culturally tends to transfer from one area to another.

WILF - I feel your pain. I did the Serbo-Croat thing. At the time, I couldn't find many resources to learn it, so I also started learning Russian, which was similar and far easier to find materials for. Then 9/11 happened. But, as John points out, the process of learning Cyrillic script was a helpful experience when I started learning Arabic script. Kind of a funny story there - one of our interpreters knew how to speak Arabic, because he learned it growing up in the US, but he never learned how to read or write it. A few of us could read Arabic script (though we didn't know what the words meant). If we saw some graffiti we would take a few tries to sound it out because there were no diacritical marks. After a few stabs at reading it, guessing at the vowel sounds, we would stumble upon the right pronunciation and then the interpreter would tell us what it meant (usually nothing significant - "Ahmed loves goats" - nice, we'll pass that on to the S-2).

William F. Owen
08-17-2009, 07:07 AM
WILF - I feel your pain. I did the Serbo-Croat thing. At the time, I couldn't find many resources to learn it, so I also started learning Russian, which was similar and far easier to find materials for.

We had to convert all our Russian speakers to try and grip Serbo-Croat. In a act of high farce, the Army had completely failed to track what language it actually had resident in it's ranks, and asking around revealed about 5 Serbo-croat speakers in the Navy, Air Force and the rest of the Army's regiments.

My pain was sitting next to a a guy on the then Army's new high-speed "HUMINT/Interrogation" course, and finding out he was fluent in Mandarin. His next posting was Northern Ireland.

MikeF
08-17-2009, 07:21 AM
I believe that Iran will re-emerge as the enduring Middle Eastern nation, hopefully as a strong US Ally. If this student is more interested in shaping our future than our past, I would recommend Farsi.

Schmedlap, COL Jones stated it better than I could. I'm choosing Farsi with Arabic as a close second.

Others have made strong inference that many have already picked up english as a second language-at least verbally.

v/r

Mike

Schmedlap
08-17-2009, 01:05 PM
My only reservation on Farsi would be to wonder how much we're actually going to communicate with Iran. I can foresee them behaving more like North Korea than Libya. But, I suppose it depends on how one intends to function - on the ground in a country and interacting face-to-face or in a more removed capacity and/or as a diplomat. If one intends to read foreign news, watch foreign TV, and other analysis type work, then Farsi would seem the way to go, as this does not require cordial relations with the country. If one intends to travel to a foreign country to do diplomatic work or conventional military work (I suspect that we'll have tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for quite a while), then Arabic.

But, either way, I do agree that Arabic and Farsi are probably the two best guesses. Whether to choose one over the other depends upon how one intends to use the skill. One could argue for one over the other for quite a while... or just learn both.

Abu Suleyman
08-17-2009, 01:16 PM
This list presumes that the language other than english that will be most useful in the Middle East will be a Middle Eastern language. However, as China supplants the US as the primary consumer of Oil in the region, they are likely to become another major player. Much like the past four hundred years, Arabs are not the masters of their own destinies but are likely to be pawns on the international stage. This will probably be true until Oil is supplanted as a major energy source.

BTW, Americans always think that foreigners speak English, because all the ones they know speak English. There are two problems with relying on that: 1) The other side controls what information you get and whom you talk to, and 2) You have no idea how well they really speak the language. The second problem is actually very common since the ubiquity of American culture (e.g. movies), it is very easy for someone to ape American idioms and even accent to the point that Americans believe that the person really understands, but in actuality doesn't.

Schmedlap
08-17-2009, 02:50 PM
Suley,

Two good points. But as for Chinese in the mideast, just because the Chinese might be influential there, does that mean learning Chinese is any more important for us? The mideast population will still speak Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, Turkish and a few other languages, right?

In regard to the second point - agreed. I was surprised at how many people in the Balkans learned English by watching re-runs of Dallas (the old "who shot JR?" soap). Carrying on a conversation with them was easy, but it was surprising to see how much difficulty they could have interpreting. It was weird. But with your second point in mind, I can see how that might have contributed.

Fuchs
08-17-2009, 03:03 PM
How does the old saying go. You might not be interested in how international terrorists networks work in Indonesia and S-E Asia, but they are interested in you. Let us also not forget that 9/11 was co-ordinated via Malaysia.

We're nevertheless writing about defence and military, right?

We would not want to invade Java because a few dozen nuts hide between its 124 million inhabitants.

Such a stupidity has already lead to a mess twice. That should be enough, or else we'd be like the rat in the laboratory that's not as smart as the other rats and keeps going for the electrified food.

Abu Suleyman
08-17-2009, 03:40 PM
I have been posting here for over a year, and I am finally referred to informally.

I agree with your point about Arabic. I guess the question would really depend on what your perspective is. If you are trying to study things like the international relations as it applies to the Middle East, then Chinese probably wins out. However, if you are studying/in the Middle East my vote goes to Arabic, although Farsi is probably also important. After all, you are going to run into a lot more people who speak Arabic or Farsi than Chinese.

Interestingly, the other languages would rise or fall in importance depending on how you define middle east. It is interesting that in many older text from the 19th to mid 20th Century refer to Palestine, Mesopotamia and Turkey as the Near East. The Middle East was more towards the Arabian Gulf, and for some authors included India. If we use that definition, Hindi might win.

shadow
08-19-2009, 06:07 AM
I originally posted this over on SWJ's Facebook thread, but I see the conversation is far livelier here:

Hindi and Urdu are actually the same language--Hindustani. They essentially have different scripts and some different vocabulary.

To the larger question, guessing where we'll be in 20 years is a fool's errand. There will doubtlessly be cause to learn any number of local languages. The best option, then, is to learn lingua francas: Modern Standard Arabic, Spanish, Russian, French, Swahili, Hausa, Persian, Hindustani, Mandarin, etc. You can narrow this list by (1) what regions interest you, (2) where you think US strategic interests lie, and (3) where instability is likely to occur.

In the near term, I'm a fan of Arabic, Somali, and Urdu. In the long term, Mandarin.

---

A few responses to what people have posted on this thread--

Fuchs - I think you vastly oversimplify the process of learning foreign vocabulary. 10 words/day is VERY fast over the long term. If you're not ACTIVELY using these words, you will lose most of them, and it's likely your brain will not appropriately acquire the rest. (I.e. your brain will associate them with their English translation, vice their actual meaning.)

I also take issue with your assertion that writing deserves no emphasis in military training. I agree that verbal communication is paramount (and not just in military application) but knowledge of the script can be necessary--especially for personnel who have any dealings with official documents like IDs or who need to be able to identify propaganda materials. This means even small unit leaders--or even PFCs--could benefit from being able to read the script. Also, personnel at higher levels benefit from having a clue about the script, especially for languages where transliteration is not standardized. Finally, unless we're talking about Chinese, scripts are relatively easy to learn.

I guess I'm piling on Fuchs here, but the Indonesia comment is way off base for a few reasons. I'll just point out the most obvious one: the Strait of Malacca.

Abu Suleyman - I would think that most Chinese companies that do business in the Middle East will use English as a common language.

Fuchs
08-19-2009, 10:40 AM
Inhabitant count of the strait of Malacca: 0

Distance of the strait of Malacca to the closest NATO article 5 territory: thousands of nm.

The two other states close to that strait mostly allow communication in English.



I didn't claim that officers should be fluent in languages; therefore the learning should not be too hard. They just need to have a base for rapid expansion, and they'll have enough opportunities to speak in that languages if the Sh** hits the fan.
My French is extremely rusty, yet I can still go through my French books 15 yyears after I learned it and quickly re-activate it (I have the same effect after a few hours in France). Trust me; I spoke almost never French during my education time. My most important line was "Je ne sais pas."

Abu Suleyman
08-19-2009, 01:19 PM
I would think that most Chinese companies that do business in the Middle East will use English as a common language.

Perhaps, although insofar as English, Arabic, and Chinese are all from different language families, there is no advantage to any particular pairing. Nonetheless, it would be a true sign of America and Britains waining power if the Arabs started to learn more Chinese. (However, the ubiquity of Roman script and the opacity of Chinese characters do offer a barrier to such a transition.)

Eden
08-19-2009, 01:24 PM
If the armed forces followed Harry Flashman's advice on learning foreign languages as a formal training regimen, we would never have to worry about fluency wherever we were sent

George L. Singleton
08-20-2009, 12:05 AM
In the near term, I'm a fan of Arabic, Somali, and Urdu. In the long term, Mandarin.

Folks in Pakistan and India who speak Urdu as a rule also speak English. My experinece when stationed in Pakistan, while ancient, 1963-1965, was then, and I suspect based on friendship still in Karachi and among overseas Pakistanis here where we live in the States is that English works fine. "Against putting time into Urdu." My personal comment/opinion here. English is the defacto language of all of Pakistan and is required in all public schools in Pakistan.

Arabic, standard or otherwise, is clearly important for the forseeable future, until or unless the world runs out of oil.

Somali or French there? I'd think either or but would be lazy and go for the French if up to me individually.

Mandarin among 400 or so Chinese dialects...our children, now grown in their mid-20s, have friends who majored in "Chinese" at Vanderbilt, then did a year contract work for IBM inside China.

Another old friend, now deceased, was ultimately the US Ambassador to the EU, but was detailed to China to learn Mandarin Chinese at State Dept. expense, for one year, then returned to his European posting...being able to somewhat deal with most Europeans (he was already multi-lingual in Western languages) and then Chinese Mandarain as part of commercial dialogue. **He formerly had been Deputy US Trade Negotiator under both Presidents Carter and Reagan, made full Ambassador in his European job under Reagan...non-partisan careerist.

My life long friend the late US Ambassador to NATO, Robin Beard from Nashville, Tennessee brushed up his Vanderbilt French major at a DC area DoD/State Language Institute and did well with French dealing with all NATO Member Nations.

Just some random observations.