From the Wall Street Journal. Lightly edited for length. Reg. req'd.
A report published by the Defense Department this week recommends "immediate . . . engagement by public, private and government agencies to improve the nation's foreign language and cultural competency." In other words, Johnny can't speak anything but English. snip. Not exactly true, given how many Americans are immigrants or the children of immigrants, who speak the parental language at home, but let's not argue about that now.
In truth, many Americans aren't proficient in a second language because they don't need to be. The rest of the world is busier than ever learning English. While speaking French may serve Brits well when they want to buy a second home in Provence (and still get gouged by local contractors), why should we bother, when Parisians will pretend not to understand us anyway? Of course, lots of us don't speak French, but that's because the local French-speakers A) speak English, and B) the Cajun and Quebecois dialects aren't useful beyond their linguistic ranges, or even very intelligible to the more numerous speakers of Standard French.
After 9/11, though, the languages deficit isn't so funny. The Defense Department report, "A Call to Action for National Language Capabilities," comes out of a huge conference in 2004 where experts discussed the growing strategic importance of language facility, in areas from intelligence gathering to commerce. While the report often lapses into the obfuscating tongue of bureaucratese, it states clearly that more than 80 federal agencies "depend in part on proficiency in more than 100 foreign languages." Without tactlessly mentioning Arabic as one of the skills urgently needed, it also notes that after 9/11 Americans were "caught flat-footed, unprepared to confront Al Qaeda terrorists."snip
This would be a U.S. Civilian Linguist Reserve Corps, the subject of a Congress-commissioned feasibility study by the National Defense University. Put simply, Americans with language skills could join a registry indicating their willingness to be called into service as needed. Not for the military--unless perhaps some wanted to sign a special waiver. But if the FBI, for instance, suddenly needed a Farsi-speaker to help with translation or analysis, it would have a list of people, pre-vetted for reliability, ready to step in.
Like many promising ideas, this one has been languishing for months while Congress attends to business presumably more urgent than national security. That's too bad, because an important resource for a linguist reserve is already in place. Among nations of the world, America is uniquely rich with immigrants and their descendants. If Johnny can't speak Spanish, let alone Pashto, many of his classmates can. I do believe I said something about that above, just after the writer's obligatory swipe at American language skills.
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