Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

American Schools and Foreign Languages

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • American Schools and Foreign Languages

    Originally posted by kato View Post
    Any pilots who did their training under the Shah would be at least in their late 50s now. I don't know how desperate Iran is for pilots, but in Europe, there's a mandatory retirement for combat pilots somewhere around age 45. 1980s, 1990s sure, but i doubt any combat pilot encountered in the last ten to fifteen years would be in that category.
    True. The guys I was dealing with were mostly American-trained. While they are gone, I would imagine they are training their younger pilots, and one would assume, for their health if nothing else, they all have some English language skills; an ear for the language of "deconfliction" warnings and the like if nothing else.

  • #2
    American Schools and Foreign Languages

    Originally posted by Doktor View Post
    Mike,

    I don't know how it is in Iran now, but here, in the former, commie state, all military pilots had mandatory English courses.

    If nothing else, it was good for their post-military careers as civilian pilots.
    While I appreciate the comment, I don't like to talk about the universality of the English language because I view it as a very bullshit one-way street. It's great that everyone speaks it, if you come from one of the states in the Anglosphere, but it makes us lazy and what it does in those states with regard to foreign language training is nothing short of monstrous. We are absolute shit when it comes to teaching foreign languages in the US, and I don't imagine it's really any better anywhere else in the UK, Australia; hell even in Canada which is supposed to be a semi-bilingual nation by law, they aren't terribly good at it.

    Sorry; I kind of went off there, but I find it personally embarrassing. I mean your abilities with written English are remarkably good, and I don't imagine you are any less capable with the spoken language. Meanwhile most Anglos here in the Desert Southwest couldn't utter "Dos cervezas por favor" if their beer drinking lives depended on it. It's just appalling to me. I'm probably an army of one on this issue, but I've lived the realities of what happens in a real world scenario when the right people cannot be found in this huge country to speak and interpret a particular foreign language (you know the one as I have discussed this before), and it wasn't a pretty picture.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by desertswo View Post
      While I appreciate the comment, I don't like to talk about the universality of the English language because I view it as a very bullshit one-way street. It's great that everyone speaks it, if you come from one of the states in the Anglosphere, but it makes us lazy and what it does in those states with regard to foreign language training is nothing short of monstrous. We are absolute shit when it comes to teaching foreign languages in the US, and I don't imagine it's really any better anywhere else in the UK, Australia; hell even in Canada which is supposed to be a semi-bilingual nation by law, they aren't terribly good at it.

      Sorry; I kind of went off there, but I find it personally embarrassing. I mean your abilities with written English are remarkably good, and I don't imagine you are any less capable with the spoken language. Meanwhile most Anglos here in the Desert Southwest couldn't utter "Dos cervezas por favor" if their beer drinking lives depended on it. It's just appalling to me. I'm probably an army of one on this issue, but I've lived the realities of what happens in a real world scenario when the right people cannot be found in this huge country to speak and interpret a particular foreign language (you know the one as I have discussed this before), and it wasn't a pretty picture.

      My Mom's third husband's brother learned Russian while in the Army. When he retired he made a fortune translating as while many knew Russian he was one of the few that caught the nuances of the language.

      We are a nation made up of literally dozens of other countries. What jerks my chain is that when offered a second language it is always Spanish....has been for decades. If you want to go that route or of that is your heritage then by all means go for it. As for me when I get the time to learn a second/third language not a chance in hell it will be Spanish. I am going for one that will do me some good and/or something from my heritage. If only those rosseta stone language programs were not so damned expensive.
      Removing a single turd from the cesspool doesn't make any difference.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by bonehead View Post
        My Mom's third husband's brother learned Russian while in the Army. When he retired he made a fortune translating as while many knew Russian he was one of the few that caught the nuances of the language.

        We are a nation made up of literally dozens of other countries. What jerks my chain is that when offered a second language it is always Spanish....has been for decades. If you want to go that route or of that is your heritage then by all means go for it. As for me when I get the time to learn a second/third language not a chance in hell it will be Spanish. I am going for one that will do me some good and/or something from my heritage. If only those rosseta stone language programs were not so damned expensive.
        Too true. I worked with an old geezer in the Pentagon (I was Joint Staff, he was DoD Staff/NSA) who had worked the Hot Line to Moscow for something like 19 years. I learned the point from him that you made; it's the nuances that matter.

        As far as how we learn languages here, or what languages we were offered, I was probably the exception an I consider myself fortunate in that for whatever reason, I have this facility for learning languages, and I was also given opportunities to learn. I was speaking Spanish almost as early as I was English; my Godparents were Mexican-Americans and they sort of doted on me. Their kids were all bi-lingual and that's when it started. I got it in Catholic school from 5th through 8th grades, and unlike most of my classmates, I paid attention. When I got to high school I started learning Portuguese and the Sicilian dialect of Italian (it all had to do with the guys I was going to school with) just on my own. I'd hang with these guys who were all bi-lingual after a fashion and just immersed myself. As far as official language training in high school I was required to learn Latin (which I had already been "speaking" as an altar boy since the 5th grade), and then we were offered a second language, which were Spanish, French and German. I took the one non-Romance language in the bunch for three years. I was only required to take two but I enjoyed it and the teacher was good at it (immersion again; it always works), so I became fairly confident in German although I don't feel so these days. In college I took Portuguese again because I had just fallen in love with the language. Much prettier; more "musical" than Spanish. Only thing was, I was learning Brazilian Portuguese as that was the Professor's background. So it was filled with at lot of "Brazil-isms" that aren't found in the mother tongue. Then when in the Navy, I had orders to be an exchange officer with the Brazilian Navy, so I was going to the Defense Language Institute at Monterrey, but my wife broke her hip and that caused all sorts of perturbations that basically cancelled those orders. Anyway, I didn't really use those skills until I got to the Pentagon and they handed my the ball on all linguist issues. That's when I learned how really screwed up we were with regard to language training. Like I said in a previous post, it's just embarrassing.

        I have a little story about my high school teaching days. When I retired from the Navy I became a bit of an iconoclast. I let my hair, which was quite gray, even at only 47, grow long enough to wear in a pony tail, and pretty much was always telling the administration what they could do with a lot of their rules and regulations that I thought were bullshit. I mean these guys were playing political games and trust me, nothing is more political than the military and especially the upper echelons thereof. I was like a ninja master playing with a bunch of neophytes. Idiots, the lot of them. Anyway, I mentioned before how we had a lot of kids who were either born in Romania, or were first generation Americans born of Romanian immigrants. Great kids, but like a lot of kids who think they are getting over on their teacher, they would speak in Romanian among themselves (everyone does it; it's just that there were more of them compared to everyone else, so it stood out more) and it didn't take me long to figure out they were often talking about me. This one term kept surfacing . . . "părul gri" . . . and I kept turning it over in my head and put 2 and 2 together and got 5, "părul gri" is very similar to the Spanish "pelo gris" or "gray hair." So one day I took a chance, and I told them, "You know, it's rude to speak in a language no one else but me understands, and one day the old "gray hair" is going to have to have a little chat with your parents . . . in Romanian." I said all this with a smile, and I wasn't really angry. It was just a lesson for them that the Spanish speaking kids had already learned; you never know what your teacher knows. In truth, I didn't know jack shit about Romanian other than it is a Romance language much older than Spanish, French, etc., but other than that, I never sat down to really learn it. But they didn't know that, and that's all that mattered. ;)

        Comment


        • #5
          Very nice kids you have there,gray hair. :)

          Grand-grand-daddy went to US Army,made some bucks and returned to fight for the motherland,or buy it back.That was the norm 100+years ago.
          I wonder what this bunch is really up to.
          But anyway,it's a strange location for Romanian migrants.Most of those from the old days went to IL or Iowa.

          p.s Hopefully the kids went away before they could learn some old Latin,Slavic and even some native descendents of the old Proto Indo-European slurs.
          Those who know don't speak
          He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by desertswo View Post
            Too true. I worked with an old geezer in the Pentagon (I was Joint Staff, he was DoD Staff/NSA) who had worked the Hot Line to Moscow for something like 19 years. I learned the point from him that you made; it's the nuances that matter.

            As far as how we learn languages here, or what languages we were offered, I was probably the exception an I consider myself fortunate in that for whatever reason, I have this facility for learning languages, and I was also given opportunities to learn. I was speaking Spanish almost as early as I was English; my Godparents were Mexican-Americans and they sort of doted on me. Their kids were all bi-lingual and that's when it started. I got it in Catholic school from 5th through 8th grades, and unlike most of my classmates, I paid attention. When I got to high school I started learning Portuguese and the Sicilian dialect of Italian (it all had to do with the guys I was going to school with) just on my own. I'd hang with these guys who were all bi-lingual after a fashion and just immersed myself. As far as official language training in high school I was required to learn Latin (which I had already been "speaking" as an altar boy since the 5th grade), and then we were offered a second language, which were Spanish, French and German. I took the one non-Romance language in the bunch for three years. I was only required to take two but I enjoyed it and the teacher was good at it (immersion again; it always works), so I became fairly confident in German although I don't feel so these days. In college I took Portuguese again because I had just fallen in love with the language. Much prettier; more "musical" than Spanish. Only thing was, I was learning Brazilian Portuguese as that was the Professor's background. So it was filled with at lot of "Brazil-isms" that aren't found in the mother tongue. Then when in the Navy, I had orders to be an exchange officer with the Brazilian Navy, so I was going to the Defense Language Institute at Monterrey, but my wife broke her hip and that caused all sorts of perturbations that basically cancelled those orders. Anyway, I didn't really use those skills until I got to the Pentagon and they handed my the ball on all linguist issues. That's when I learned how really screwed up we were with regard to language training. Like I said in a previous post, it's just embarrassing.

            I have a little story about my high school teaching days. When I retired from the Navy I became a bit of an iconoclast. I let my hair, which was quite gray, even at only 47, grow long enough to wear in a pony tail, and pretty much was always telling the administration what they could do with a lot of their rules and regulations that I thought were bullshit. I mean these guys were playing political games and trust me, nothing is more political than the military and especially the upper echelons thereof. I was like a ninja master playing with a bunch of neophytes. Idiots, the lot of them. Anyway, I mentioned before how we had a lot of kids who were either born in Romania, or were first generation Americans born of Romanian immigrants. Great kids, but like a lot of kids who think they are getting over on their teacher, they would speak in Romanian among themselves (everyone does it; it's just that there were more of them compared to everyone else, so it stood out more) and it didn't take me long to figure out they were often talking about me. This one term kept surfacing . . . "părul gri" . . . and I kept turning it over in my head and put 2 and 2 together and got 5, "părul gri" is very similar to the Spanish "pelo gris" or "gray hair." So one day I took a chance, and I told them, "You know, it's rude to speak in a language no one else but me understands, and one day the old "gray hair" is going to have to have a little chat with your parents . . . in Romanian." I said all this with a smile, and I wasn't really angry. It was just a lesson for them that the Spanish speaking kids had already learned; you never know what your teacher knows. In truth, I didn't know jack shit about Romanian other than it is a Romance language much older than Spanish, French, etc., but other than that, I never sat down to really learn it. But they didn't know that, and that's all that mattered. ;)



            Right before graduation one of the final questions on my last Biology exam was what would I have done differently if I could go back 10 years and do something over again. I said "learn Latin". Just knowing the language would have added 10 points, or more, to many of my science exams.

            I toyed with the idea of taking a language in college but the whole first year didn't count so take two years of it to make anything of it and the classes always clashed with my labs.
            Removing a single turd from the cesspool doesn't make any difference.

            Comment


            • #7
              Mike,

              I am confused on why the Americans don't speak second language. I was expecting at least 200 million to do. And not only Spanish, but Chinese, Eastern European, German, Italian.

              OK, on a more serious note on the topic...

              What changed in USAF minds to base last generation stealth jets abroad?

              I get the "See how much bang your buck does" and "No biz like show biz" parts. Correct me if wrong, but the previous generation of stealthies did the bang, only they departed from CONUS.
              No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

              To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by bonehead View Post
                Right before graduation one of the final questions on my last Biology exam was what would I have done differently if I could go back 10 years and do something over again. I said "learn Latin". Just knowing the language would have added 10 points, or more, to many of my science exams.

                I toyed with the idea of taking a language in college but the whole first year didn't count so take two years of it to make anything of it and the classes always clashed with my labs.
                For me it was Greek; I always wanted to learn more. My wife is half-Greek; her mother born and raised in Piraeus. Beyond "Κύριε ἐλέησον, Χριστέ ἐλέησον" ("Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy" For reasons I never understood, the old Latin Mass I first learned so long ago, did this weird shift into Koine Greek during the Offertory) I'm lost at sea! I also learned "Χριστός αυξάνεται" ("Christ is risen") from some Orthodox friends for Easter at the local Greek Orthodox Church. Even though Roman Catholics ourselves, we always enjoy the major holidays at whatever Greek Orthodox church we found wherever we've lived. There are some beautiful ones in San Diego and Phoenix believe it or not.

                Comment


                • #9
                  American Schools and Foreign Languages

                  Originally posted by Mihais View Post
                  Very nice kids you have there,gray hair. :)

                  Grand-grand-daddy went to US Army,made some bucks and returned to fight for the motherland,or buy it back.That was the norm 100+years ago.
                  I wonder what this bunch is really up to.
                  But anyway,it's a strange location for Romanian migrants.Most of those from the old days went to IL or Iowa.

                  p.s Hopefully the kids went away before they could learn some old Latin,Slavic and even some native descendents of the old Proto Indo-European slurs.
                  I thought so too; it's the fucking desert for Christ's sake!! I actually asked a parent one time, "Why Surprise, Arizona?" and she told me that basically one family sort of paves the way and if it's good, they let others know, and they start to move in en masse. It may be the desert, but you can buy a lot of nice house a lot cheaper here than you can in other parts of the country, so that is a factor. They also discovered one sure fired way of making a living, and that is doing something most home grown Americans have forgotten how to do, or decided not to do, and that's taking care of our old people. So the Romanians have cornered the market in what's known as "assisted living" in Surprise, Arizona. They buy a big house (they are known by some wags as "Mormon Boxes"), and fit it out with ramps and stuff for wheel chairs, and all the other stuff you need to take care of old folks, and then take them in, and from what I understand, they do a great job of it. It seems your people honor the old, in a why our people have forgotten how to do. It's really kind of a wonderful success story. The Romanians have gotten into other lines of work too, and their kids are contributing in a positive way. One of my students who, as luck would have it, I had all four years during his stay in school, joined the Air Force, and was given an airplane (an F-15 at to take care of Nellis, Air Force Base near Las Vegas) to take care of. It was quite a transformation, as he had been a little drifty, like all kids can be, but he seemed to have a goal of being all he could be. so it was sort of gratifying in a way. I hasten to add that I had nothing to do with his joining the military. I don't recruit; that's someone else's job.

                  As far as those slurs are concerned, when I was handed the whole linguist thing to work on (along with half a hundred other cans of worms), I really was forced to dig down deep into the whole mechanics of linguistics; something I hadn't done since I studied anthropological linguistics in university, and I found out something a little curious about your language. If an anthropological linguist wants to found out if a word in a Romance language, like Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese, was found in the vulgar (as in "common" not rude) Latin spoken by Romans back in the time of the Caesars, they don't look at Latin as we know it because we've actually lost a lot of how the language was actually spoken back then. No; they look at Romanian. It seems that for a period of time, the Roman colonies there were sort of cut off from parts of the outside world, and the language retained all of its roots. It's the sort of puzzle that fascinates the hell out of me. I just thought that was pretty cool. ;)

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by bonehead View Post
                    What jerks my chain is that when offered a second language it is always Spanish....has been for decades.
                    Oddly enough, over here Spanish has been making huge inroads in the last decade - looking around the about two dozen high schools here it's now pretty much one of the two default third languages (aside from French).

                    When I was in highschool twenty years ago, none of these schools carried Spanish. You had a choice between French, Latin (with or without French as fourth) and no third language. Only exception of one humanist school in the city, which had and still has a "traditional" course with mandatory English, Latin, Old Greek and French as foreign languages, with Hebrew and Italian offered as optional sixth and seventh languages.

                    I went a sorta more traditional route - English and Latin in highschool, learned some Turkish (swearing) in elementary, some Russian (swearing) in the Army and took both Spanish and Japanese for fun in college.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by kato View Post
                      Oddly enough, over here Spanish has been making huge inroads in the last decade - looking around the about two dozen high schools here it's now pretty much one of the two default third languages (aside from French).

                      When I was in highschool twenty years ago, none of these schools carried Spanish. You had a choice between French, Latin (with or without French as fourth) and no third language. Only exception of one humanist school in the city, which had and still has a "traditional" course with mandatory English, Latin, Old Greek and French as foreign languages, with Hebrew and Italian offered as optional sixth and seventh languages.

                      I went a sorta more traditional route - English and Latin in highschool, learned some Turkish (swearing) in elementary, some Russian (swearing) in the Army and took both Spanish and Japanese for fun in college.
                      Kato, forgive me, I'm still kind of new here, so if you wouldn't mind sharing with me, where is "over here?"

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by desertswo View Post
                        If an anthropological linguist wants to found out if a word in a Romance language, like Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese, was found in the vulgar (as in "common" not rude) Latin spoken by Romans back in the time of the Caesars, they don't look at Latin as we know it because we've actually lost a lot of how the language was actually spoken back then. No; they look at Romanian. It seems that for a period of time, the Roman colonies there were sort of cut off from parts of the outside world, and the language retained all of its roots. It's the sort of puzzle that fascinates the hell out of me. I just thought that was pretty cool. ;)

                        They drummed our head with Romanian being descendent from vulgar Latin,but that tidbit is news to me.It's true I've been into mathematics in highschool and my interest for languages is a recent one,related to my general interest for history.Except some languages spoken by the ''most probable enemies''. ;)
                        Thinking for 2 seconds,it makes sense.For once Romanian is homogenous,too a degree unlike any other Romance language.
                        Second is that it had no outside influence from any neo-Latin languages until 19th century,when many neologisms were borrrowed from French and very few from Italian.

                        An interesting thing I noticed,intelligence officers in the past tended to come from the navy.They travelled around the world and spoke foreign languages.
                        Last edited by Mihais; 25 Sep 13,, 19:36.
                        Those who know don't speak
                        He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by desertswo View Post
                          Kato, forgive me, I'm still kind of new here, so if you wouldn't mind sharing with me, where is "over here?"
                          Somewhere in Germany. Close to French border.
                          No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                          To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Doktor View Post
                            Somewhere in Germany. Close to French border.
                            Ah, I see!

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by kato View Post
                              Oddly enough, over here Spanish has been making huge inroads in the last decade - looking around the about two dozen high schools here it's now pretty much one of the two default third languages (aside from French).

                              When I was in highschool twenty years ago, none of these schools carried Spanish. You had a choice between French, Latin (with or without French as fourth) and no third language. Only exception of one humanist school in the city, which had and still has a "traditional" course with mandatory English, Latin, Old Greek and French as foreign languages, with Hebrew and Italian offered as optional sixth and seventh languages.

                              I went a sorta more traditional route - English and Latin in highschool, learned some Turkish (swearing) in elementary, some Russian (swearing) in the Army and took both Spanish and Japanese for fun in college.
                              When I was a freshman in high school (early 1980's) the school made some changes. "Due to budgetary concerns French and German will be dropped leaving Spanish...Oh by the way a foreign language is now mandatory". I said, "Fine. If another language is mandatory I will take German. Send me to another school or community college so I can learn it because what you just did is highly discriminatory. Almost went to court but the administration backed down...until I graduated. Now days the state has all kinds of immersion studies where kids can go to learn every subject in another language...Always Spanish.
                              Removing a single turd from the cesspool doesn't make any difference.

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X