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  1. #1
    Council Member xf4wso's Avatar
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    Default Foreign Language Training & Use

    I would be interested in hearing from anyone with experience in learning and/or using one of the languages from recent conflict zones (i.e. Dari, Pashto, Arabic). In particular, was their a significant difference between what was learned in a classroom vs. the real language in country? How well did the language training prepare you? What was the benefit of knowing the language? What would you suggest about language learning for someone going to the area(s) you were in?

    Thanks in advance for your feedback, everyone!

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    Default It really depends on you.

    I think language learnt in a classroom is only good to a certain extent. What is learnt in a classroom can be rapidly lost after the class is over until you find a medium to continue to practice.

    There are 2 things about practicing language in a conflict zone- will you be outside the wire and/or how much will you interact with the host nation population?

    If you will be living on a govt. installation, then you will probably have a better chance to practice languages like Hindi/Nepali/Tamil/Bengali/Tagalog just by talking to the guys working at the gym,etc. That is unless you will have opportunity to use the language for your work (or posted to a GCC country where you can venture out and interact with locals).

    I think an excellent way to continue your studies after you class is over is to watch movies/news and listen to lots of music in the target language. Basically language study is a very personal and dynamic thing and a continual process, there is no formula so you have to find out what works for you. I am fluent in 5 languages and I still have to study before each proficiency test to make sure I do well. I have lived the 3 countries to which 3 of my languages were native to, and those are my 3 best languages, so it will definitely help if you get a chance to practice with locals. Good luck!

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    To your question about classroom vs. real language- there is generally a difference in how the language is spoken, for example, rural vs. urban, regional accents and dialects, slang etc.

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    Welcome aboard! To your questions, and as parvati mentioned, a lot will depend on your job and your motivation to immerse. Living on a FOB in the current risk-averse US Army environment will limit your ability to get out and really work with the host nation in the target language. If you're lucky enough to be outside of a HQ bubble and really able to get out and about, then school, at least the US Defense Language Institute, will have prepared you well.

    I've taken DLI courses (Dari) both times before I deployed to Afghanistan (Kabul). 4 month short courses for Afghan Hands immediately prior to deployment. It's enough to be able to converse in basic discussions in basic tenses (simple present and subjunctive, intransitives, active/passive sentence construction, negative conjugation, past progressive, present perfect, future progressive, etc...) but not in any work-related relevant vocabulary. 4-8 months isn't enough in my limited experience to build enough vocab to deal with heavy COIN issues. Basic security things, police/military ops, etc...and of course normal vocab at the 1+ level, but not governance, COIN, political, economic vocab.

    But back to your point, training prepared me well to break the ice with Afghans, get them comfortable with my friendliness and openness, and show them that I'm making an effort...which is very important towards relationship and trust building. Not much more capability than that though. And remember the Dari (at least in DLI) will be the formal, academic language versus the spoken, colloquial language. That'll be amusing for locals to hear you speak but it won't be any kind of roadblock.

    Ultimately, how useful it is will depend on you. How much you study outside of school and how much you push yourself to immerse once you get there (if you're able to). But the formal military schooling and syllabus at DLI is constructed well to prepare you to start fairly capably in the target language and build from there.
    Last edited by kotkinjs1; 02-10-2013 at 01:34 PM.

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    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kotkinjs1 View Post
    But back to your point, training prepared me well to break the ice with Afghans, get them comfortable with my friendliness and openness, and show them that I'm making an effort...which is very important towards relationship and trust building.
    The people in this discussion are mostly quite proficient in some other languages. I am not. For somebody like me kotkinjs1's point above is of supreme importance. It cannot be overstated. They know you are never going to be able to get much but they respect you for trying. Combine that with old fashioned gentlemanly behavior and most of the people you work with will be favorably inclined toward you. That, literally, can save your life.

    Most people who go overseas won't get much beyond the "Donde esta el bano?" stage but even that level can be hugely helpful, especially when combined with the right attitude.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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    Council Member ganulv's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by parvati View Post
    I think an excellent way to continue your studies after you class is over is to watch movies/news and listen to lots of music in the target language. Basically language study is a very personal and dynamic thing and a continual process, there is no formula so you have to find out what works for you.
    When I was learning Spanish abroad I remember that having the opportunity to watch English language films with Spanish subtitles was especially helpful to me.

    FWIW, one of the principles of immersion programs is that the combination of more exposure and less time improves learning outcome as opposed to more exposure alone (i.e., 40 hours of exposure and/or instruction over the course of a week will yield better results than 40 hours of exposure and/instruction over the course of a month).
    If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)

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    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
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    People often forget how quickly languages change.

    Long long ago I worked briefly on an "interactive laser disc" (yes, that long ago) training system that had been commissioned by the State Dept for instruction in Tagalog. They needed a white guy that spoke Tagalog, and I was around. The script had been prepared in the US by a woman who was apparently the senior and most respected teacher of the language in DC. She'd apparently been teaching there for over 20 years.

    When we actually looked at the script, it turned out to be virtually unintelligible to anyone who spoke the language in its modern incarnation. Filipinos who read it had vague memories of their grandparents talking like that. For me (having picked up Tagalog on the back streets of Cubao) it was essentially a different language. Any diplomat who actually learned from that script would have been, in effect, learning a dead language.

    I wonder if any similar events occur in other languages, particularly those that are spoken over wide areas and with significant local variation, and with languages that are rapidly evolving...
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Council Member xf4wso's Avatar
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    Default Appreciation

    Thanks to all who have responded. I found the info on subtitled TV programs, DLI courses and Tagalog quite interesting. I have some background in Arabic, Persian and, having lived in Turkey now for a number or years, Turkish. I used subtitled TV programs when I was first learning Turkish, and I discovered that there are some dialects of the language that are quite different from the standard language that I learned.

    As for Dari, does the DLI give any reason for teaching the formal/written language rather than the spoken one? I know that written Dari is almost identical to written Farsi, but that the spoken forms are somewhat different, but mutually intelligible. It would seem to me that in most situations in Afghanistan knowledge of everyday speech would be more useful than the written language.

    Finally, which language is more useful in Kabul, Dari or Pashto?

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    Council Member ganulv's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by xf4wso View Post
    It would seem to me that in most situations in Afghanistan knowledge of everyday speech would be more useful than the written language.
    My experience in doing coursework in anthropology is that classroom instruction in all languages was invariably in a different register than that which we wanted to be able to eventually use in day-to-day interactions. So we looked at what we were getting in the classroom as the base from which we were going to build as much as anything else. That inevitably results in some timesink when you get in-country, but there is a practical side to consider when dealing with language with which there is a lot of local variation (something I am sure you are aware of if you have worked with Arabic!).
    If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)

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    Council Member Stan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
    People often forget how quickly languages change.

    I wonder if any similar events occur in other languages, particularly those that are spoken over wide areas and with significant local variation, and with languages that are rapidly evolving...
    Hey Dude !
    Just recently with a trip to Congo I realized how backwards my Belgian French and Lingala were. Kids laughing at you is a pretty good sign you are speaking a dead language.

    When I got here in 95 and my first Estonian teacher returned from the States and we had dinner together, she too realized that her three years in DC had left her high and dry with Estonian. She refused to believe that the student had now become the teacher. With less than 1,5 million Estonian speakers in the world, they still managed to evolve leaving their grandparents behind.

    Quote Originally Posted by xf4wso View Post
    It would seem to me that in most situations in Afghanistan knowledge of everyday speech would be more useful than the written language.
    To echo Matt, better to concentrate on colloquial language and not worry about written... total different ball game for C2 speakers. Not to throw you under the bus or anything, but with four languages I reached real proficiency in country after about 5 years. That is to say, when they started to accuse me of being Finnish (which is a serious insult reserved for Russians) I knew I was there. Can't get rid of the accent, but can indeed improve on the grammar and speaking skills.

    Stay safe Bro !

    Stan
    If you want to blend in, take the bus

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    Same kind of issues regarding Hindi and Urdu. In the upper classes in Pakistan and India, people tend to speak a mixture of English and Hindi/Urdu. I can totally relate to Mr. Stan for being laughed at for speaking a more formal version of the language - “why are you speaking such pure Hindi like my great-grandfather/Urdu teacher/chai boy from some village”?

    In Mumbai, they speak Mumbaiya – a pretty much crude street slang “gansta” version of Hindi (Dawood Ibrahim and Co. speak this kind of Hindi). If one were write a language test in the Mumbaiya version, they would totally fail the writing test and if one were to speak in DLI Hindi on the streets of Mumbai, they would be understood, but laughed at.

    Like Mr. Ganulv said, there needs to be kind of a standardization, as you probably know Arabic from Africa vs. Arabic from the Gulf etc.

    It is also the case with European languages. If you study classical Italian then good luck understanding people speak in Naples! Likewise with Spanish.

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