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The Defense Language Institute has massive failure rates for students in the Cat 5 languages. Most of these courses are also at least a year long, if not more.

by blister 12y ago

The Defense Language Institute has massive failure rates for students in the Cat 5 languages. Most of these courses are also at least a year long, if not more. They would probably have to increase the overall size of that facility 20-fold to produce enough linguists annually to have qualified linguists embedded in every unit. The other big problem is that the people that (traditionally) do best in a linguistics MOS are usually highly intelligent and work well in an intelligence type of career field. Most of these would not do well in a battle-hardened infantry unit.

bkmartin 12y ago
There has to be enough people in our ranks with enough intelligence to learn these languages. You don't have to be the best linguist, just a capable one that is willing to work hard. Not to mention that every combat troop should probably be getting at least cursory training in the local language as part of their on going training when not out in the field engaged in combat. Our soldiers are not stupid, and if we treat them like the intelligent and invaluable human beings that they are then I think we might see far more success that we can even imagine. Imagine if you could understand the locals even 20% of the time vs our current nearly 0% for most units. How much more effective would we be in not only our intelligence in the field, but being able to convey our support for them and helping to relate to the local population.
- jwhitlark 12y ago
  It's not intelligence, but motivation that line units lack, in my experience. People who volunteer for the front line are more interested in solving problems with firepower than more peaceful interactions. This sort of observation led to a suggestion that the American military should be divided into a Leviathan part and a System Administrator part, an idea I think is worth considering. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map for more.
venomsnake 12y ago
You will be surprised how motivating to learn a language is the knowledge that your life literally depends on it.

by blister 12y ago

bkmartin 12y ago

There has to be enough people in our ranks with enough intelligence to learn these languages. You don't have to be the best linguist, just a capable one that is willing to work hard. Not to mention that every combat troop should probably be getting at least cursory training in the local language as part of their on going training when not out in the field engaged in combat. Our soldiers are not stupid, and if we treat them like the intelligent and invaluable human beings that they are then I think we might see far more success that we can even imagine. Imagine if you could understand the locals even 20% of the time vs our current nearly 0% for most units. How much more effective would we be in not only our intelligence in the field, but being able to convey our support for them and helping to relate to the local population.

jwhitlark 12y ago
It's not intelligence, but motivation that line units lack, in my experience. People who volunteer for the front line are more interested in solving problems with firepower than more peaceful interactions. This sort of observation led to a suggestion that the American military should be divided into a Leviathan part and a System Administrator part, an idea I think is worth considering. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map for more.

venomsnake 12y ago

You will be surprised how motivating to learn a language is the knowledge that your life literally depends on it.