Foreign languages for the armed forces ?

Question

If personnel in the armed forces in any country, but especially the US and British armed forces - being as our both our nations seem to be involved everywhere - were to be trained in the foreign languages in the countries they operated in - could this not possibly change the outcome of the conflicts in those countries ?

Isn't there a chance if you were actually communicating in the same language, even if, to put it bluntly, you are only slinging insults at each other - that somewhere along the line you might find a way to do more than just fight and kill each other ?

Doesn't conflict a lot the time come from frustration because of confusion?

In essense I might know if someone is angry with me, because of their facial expression - and they're shouting at me at the top of their voice and jesticulating wildly - but wouldn't it be better to actually know WHY THEY'RE ANGRY WITH ME or for them to know why I AM ANGRY WITH THEM ?????

Answer 1

each branch of service sends linguists to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey CA. Their sole job is to learn a language, if not native level, at the very least somwhat fluently. Additionally, indiviudals are sent there to learn the basics for a particular mission. My next door neighbor is an Army Captain learning Farsi at the moment so that the next time he goes back, he will be able to communicate better with the local leaders.

Answer 2

Good question
I agree that it would be better to be able to communicate with the local population but also think of the time and money spent to learn a foreign language. Not only that but also think of all of the dialects that a soldier would have to know. Also would have to remember that not all soldiers stay in the Military for 20 + years. Some do their 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 years and then get out. That would be alot of time and money wasted on someone who wasnt going to be in for awhile.

Answer 3

We do learn the language, just not intensely. We trained for one month, 8 hours a day before we went to Iraq. Granted you can't learn a lot of Arabic in this time, but you can learn enough. Plus i am a medic, so we got extra training on giving exams in Arabic. By the way, you should ask Bush why he cut funding. When i joined the army, i was a Korean linguist. i was 2 weeks from completing a year long course in Korean, and he decided that Korea was not a threat and that all of us in Korean class were going to go be infantry or medics. Yeah, now they are begging for Korean linguists. I guess he sees only what his vendetta is, and not in the best interest of America.

Answer 4

Think logically how much time and money would it take to train 50,000 people together to become fluent in a foreign language at the same time. I speak 4 languages, 3 of them fluently, and it took me years to learn each of them. And not everyone is as adapt at learning languages as some others. You spend time and money to train 500,000 people one foreign language, than something flairs up and you have to train everyone in that new language all over again, than in couple of months have a disaster and than another one? You would be hard pressed to find that many individuals that are qualified, with the expertise to teach 50,000 or even 500,000 people.