Sorry, last post was meant to be @Kevin, but in response to Stan's comments. As you will see, there are multiple views on this topic.
Sorry, last post was meant to be @Kevin, but in response to Stan's comments. As you will see, there are multiple views on this topic.
Chinese All the Way
As a former Army Chinese linguist I will make a few arguments for chinese, that you may not have thought of.
1) There will always be a demand for Chinese, no matter how many linguists there are there will never be enough.
2) The Chinese are always very gracious and there are Chinese communities everywhere. While this is true to greater or lesser extents with any language, the near ubiquity of "Chinatowns" throughout the world means that with Chinese, you have a foot in that door. More importantly, as you have hopefully learned with your other languages, knowing the language goes a long long way towards respect, and that is especially true with Chinese.
3) China has a ton of movies, many of them good, and most of them available through Netflix or online, and sometimes even Redbox or Blockbuster depending on where you live.
4) Chinese food is really good, and it can be a lot of fun going to the places that your Chinese speaking partners know.
5) You will never get a tattoo that says something you don't understand, because it looks cool, and you will know what all the idiots around you have tattooed on their backsides.
6) There are a lot of really good students from China, who it is very useful to know. If you know their language, they will seek you out. (This is not about 'asians are smart' or anything like that, just that many of the best students from China come to the US for an education.) I have had several very well known visiting professors seek me out for assistance, and help me in turn, only because I speak Chinese, even though I am a grad student.
Then I have to give the one drawback.
1) Chinese is easily the hardest language I have ever learned, and I speak six including Arabic. This is because there is no alphabet of any kind, and there are 60k+ characters. That is a lot. However, that is also the reason for a lot of the things that I was talking about in the plusses. If you climb a big mountain, you will get rewarded with a great view.
Audentes adiuvat fortuna
"Abu Suleyman"
I will echo the comments about taking a language.
Study a language that you will use, regardless of your career field. Army Selection boards can be fickle things; you have a co-equal chance of being Transportation, Quartermaster or Chemical Corps as you do your "dream jobs". If you really want to function in a language or Intel based MOS, forget about being an officer and go to Warrant Officer Course.
It's kind of brutal, but there it is. Your goal for being an officer should be to lead soldiers, not do a job or speak a language. If that is not your goal, you should not be an officer.
120mm,Originally Posted by 120mm
My future first career objective is of course learning to lead and manage troops, as well as gaining proficiency in planning and seeing that goals on a tactical, operational, and strategic level are properly executed.
However, in this day and age I view language and cultural proficiency as important, and this has been stressed to many by others. In addition to the the current and future security environment, and especially if I am aiming for MI or any related officer slot under it.
However, the language issue ties in part with my academics, which also ranks in equal importance with my need for military and physical proficiency as well. So overall, I view those three issues as equally important to each other.
You were given good advice, by one who has been there and done what you are attempting.
Instead of arguing, you should listen
SF, CA and PSYOP are non-accessions branches. You can apply as a 1LT (P).
You should know this.
I knew about SF, however the other two I was a little confused about both of those at first.
Kevin,
I agree with a lot that's been said here, so I'll just reinforce some points.
As someone who has undergone formal and informal language training for seven different languages (including Russian which I barely get a chance to speak), start with selecting a language you will be motivated to learn and one you can use often.
Learning a language is a hard slog, so spend your time doing something you will get a lot out of.
As an MI Officer, if you need to retrain in another language, no big deal. Once you've had a positive experience learning a language, you can take on another. It's time-consuming, sure, but it will be faster the second time around.
Btw, RE cultural proficiency, you'll learn it along the way, not in a classroom.
All the best!
I think you are on the right track, then.
There are two things, academically that I think really reflect on thinking skills/intelligence. Writing and learning a foreign language. While both are not a priori proof of intellect, they indicate an inquisitive mind and the motivation to expand it.
Good on you.
Kevin,
You're doing the right thing in pursuing a language. Some thought on how to pick one;
1) Pick a language spoken in places you'd like to go. If you don't like cold weather, don't study Finnish (Finland is a great place, but only has about three months a year that aren't bitter cold). My next project is studying Bahasa (Indonesian). There are terrorists there, there is snorkeling to die for, and they grow coffee and chocolate; my kind of place. This leads into...
2) Pick a language that is needed. Latin is a great language for a number of reasons, but only spoken in Vatican City, not of great utility to the DoD.
Which language? Mandarin, Korean, Urdu/Hindi, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Afrikaans, and Arabic are all fairly obvious and needed, but Chinese dialects, Central Asian languages, Pacific Islander languages and less common Pakistani and Indian languages are needed. A slightly obscure language would really make you stand out from the crowd. (In most somewhat metropolitan areas) you can find a club to help you.
Check out relations between languages before settling on one. Dari and Farsi (by reputation), Serb and Slovene (by personal experience), are closer pairs than Spanish and Portuguese. On the other hand Mandarin and Cantonese are fairly far apart despite being both 'Chinese'.
I understand the reservations expressed by others about the lower density languages, but it is good to hear conflicting positions. I'd skip on Spanish as the Army has many people who grew up speaking New World Spanish, and the need for additional speakers is not great. I'm not sure I agree with the earlier comment about left over Cold War Russian linguists; they're retiring rapidly, and most are at a point in their lived where field time is less attractive (or practical) than it used to be.
I'm not sure I agree with 120mm about "Your goal for being an officer should be to lead soldiers, not do a job or speak a language." The Army is a big place and needs a lot of MI officers who aren't in traditional troop-leading positions. If you're dead set on being an MI officer, go forth an conquer, but know that it might be a challenge to get to where you wish to go. I can completely understand someone whose Army career aspiration is to be a '2' or 'asst. 2' for 20 years. It's hard to do, but I understand the desire, and if competent, that officer is no less valuable than one that commands a battalion as the apex of his or her career.
@120mm - this will circle back to the old dispute about "all officers are leaders first, last, and always" vs. "balance of staff and leadership officers" if we're not careful. A whole seperate rant...
Wise words...
Pick your languages for you and you alone; they take substantial time and effort and since life is short, you want to be working on something that you love.
SF, CA, FAO, MI, DoS, USAID, and OGA are some governmental pathways where an extra language or two will help you to complete missions plus the time and effort you spend on mastering them will be financially rewarded (language pay for language slots). In the private sector the banking, hotel, transportation, and energy industries seem to care about those types of skills.
Gaining and maintaining your skills: get the 500 verbs book for your language (ipod app or hard copy), take college courses, hire tutor's, pay for immersion opportunities...seek settings where you can regularly practice speaking, download foreign news podcasts, read BBC online (it's printed in various languages), read local papers (internet), read, read, read. Shortwave broadcasts are still around as well (dawn and dusk are the best listening times). Spend some bucks and get a satellite tv package with foreign channels of your choice A summer or semester abroad is a great thing and will change your life. If you haven't signed an ROTC contract yet consider a year abroad...teach english somewhere and get paid to learn....
Sapere Aude
Spanish is not necessarily what your mama taught you
Most US born native speakers of Spanish come from one of two sub-cultures - Puerto Rican or Tex-Mex. Both dialects have been strongly influenced by the US mainstream culture. In colloquial Puerto Rican Spanish, for example, the formal "you" (usted) has almost entirely disappeared and been replaced by the informal "tu" form.
An anecdote to illustrate the signifcance: Some years ago I was leading a SOUTHCOM civic action site survey in Honduras and one member of my team was a female CPT from Puerto Rico. The Honduran military who were supposed to join us on the survey had failed to show and I had recruited a Honduran LT to provide a Honduran face to the team. The CPT began to interrogate him as if he was a raw recruit constantly using the "tu" in one of the most liguistically formal cultures in Latin America. So I intervened and got her out of the discussion and later chewed her out (in private) for using the "tu" with him (which was clearly insulting). She, of course, had no clue that she had done anything wrong and I am not sure that even today she would get it.
Moral of the story: Relying on "native speakers" without any training in the sub-cultural implications of their language is dangerous at best. Or, as Churchill put it when speaking of the Brits and Americans, "One people divided by a common language."
Cheers
JohnT
Van brought up a good point about Indonesian; it's quite a useful language to have, particularly in light of increased ties between the American and Indonesian militaries.
Moreover, it's not too hard to learn. I'm not too sure about "standing out from the crowd", but John T. Fishel put it well: no matter which language you pick, do it well and get it right.
My point is two-fold: First, when you are assessed for branch, the drunken poo-flinging monkeys will put you where they want, not where you want. Therefore, "planning on going MI" is not a solid battle plan if your choice is to become an officer. So when you go to QM school, your plans to be Chinese linguist will be largely foiled.
Secondly, commissioned officers on active duty get to do their actual core competency job for very few years of a 20+ year career. The rest of the time, they get to do some completely unrelated staff job. I have not met a single "Do-er" who is really happy with their career as a commissioned officer because of that fact.
That is the origin of my "commissioned vs. Warrant Officer" argument.
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