The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2006

The Chimera of Linguistic Facility We have seen “Vital Language of the Era” fads come and go, as well. Today the top contenders include Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and Urdu. A generation ago, the central U.S. chal- lenge (the Iraq of its day) was Vietnam, so winning hearts and minds ostensibly required our bodies on the ground to communicate in Vietnam- ese. Toward that end, Washington sent thousands of our best and bright- est through crash courses in the lan- guage, as well as more extended study. Of course, the reasons we lost that war had little if anything to do with the ability to speak the language. Nor is their hard-won linguistic expertise exactly in high demand today. Does anyone really think that we will convert Hamas or al-Qaida sup- porters to Western democracy by debating our differences in Arabic instead of English? And even if that were the magic key, just which variant of Arabic (or Chinese, to cite another prime candidate) should the new best- and-brightest generation be learning? In truth, unless you come to the Foreign Service with the language already imbedded in your family or educational background, or possess the linguistic knack of a Gen. Vernon Walters, you will probably never speak a “hard” language with the same flu- ency with which your foreign inter- locutor will speak English — because he or she almost certainly began mas- tering English in childhood. Your hard-language ability is likely to be equivalent to the knack of a bear for riding a bicycle: the observer marvels that you speak it at all, rather than that you speak it well. And, if we wish to recruit first- or second-generation Americans for special language posi- tions, we must calculate the weight of the cultural baggage that they will bring with them into these assign- ments. J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 17 S P E A K I N G O U T