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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (96670)	4/28/2003 2:13:18 PM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I find this hard to accept but i will not question what you say. Hope someone else can either challenge or verify your view on arabic. I have never mastered any language so i am not the guy to make this fight. As far as my friend goes, you once said he and all the exiles were wrong when he disagreed with you about something. I cant remember what now but it was a general statement on the exiles that they are wrong and you are right. I think thats when you put me on ignore. mike

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (96670)	4/28/2003 6:28:43 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Firstly, Arabic contains too many sounds which unless you develop vocal cords for in childhood you will not manage to fully vocalize. Vocal chords only produce a tiny buzzing signal which is amplified by the vocal tract acting as an acoustical transformer, like a horn. This is further amplified and modified by pharynx, sinuses and mouth. Linguistic utterence is formed by tongue and pharyngial muscles. The problem adult learners of foreign languages have learning to speak foreign languages is lack of familiarity with sounds not made by their known languages. (Children have less difficulty because they are better imitators than adults). The problem is hearing, that is, distinguishing the new sounds from those they already know. Once they can distinguish the difference, learning pronunciation is relatively easy if instruction is competent. Add to this, the fact that when you learn Arabic, you are learning the proper form of it. But proper Arabic is so difficult that although highly desired, nobody not even the best Arab leaders, can speak it properly. Even if you could, the street dialect is very different. Fortunately, humans are adaptable and within a language can deal with linguistic difference over geography and can usually understand strangers. It sometimes takes a little time. I'm sure if you had visited Cornwall or Black Country thirty years ago, you would have had enormous difficulty understanding a damn thing the first few days. The more rube-ish of the locals would no doubt have mocked you a bit - they do everywhere. Learning to speak Arabic might be difficult for monolingual adult Americans but it certainly is possible. You vastly overplay the difficulties.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (96670)	4/28/2003 8:49:35 PM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Since I attained some competence at a foreign language as an adult a few years ago, by "immersion", I can say that adults or even late adolescents won't attain native fluency crossing over from Persian to Arabic, or Pashtu, Dari, or other languages spoken in Afghanistan and Arabic for that matter. It just doesn't happen. But there will always be individuals who are bilingual for one reason or another, and it only takes a few of these types of people to organize some real disorder in a country in the state Iraq is in. Arabic itself has regional dialects, and you can tell just by listening to the news that the variant spoken in Iraq is much more guttural than the variant from Saudi Arabia, and if I can hear that it must be as glaringly obvious as a Brooklyn accent versus a Boston accent to an arabic speaker. When the Mossad has had Arab speaking operatives, they have to find people who speak with the correct local accent on top of other difficulties. It is possible to find such people, just not everywhere. But if one want's to organize and stir up trouble, I don't think native language fluency in Arabic is totally necessary. What is necessary is a population that will be receptive to their "talking points" and spin. That we can do something about by not fouling up in getting water, and other services going as fast as possible, and securing ammunition dumps placed cynically right next to civilian populated areas. I do think a lot of the superficial media talk about all these foreign operatives in Iraq is scare talk. Just like the article I skimmed in the Boston Globe on Sunday, gleefully talking about how the Shi'ites were organizing a revolt against America, you could easily see where the reporter was coming from. The media loves to make you crazy with fear and anxiety, to sell more product like some kind of daily soap opera, and on top of the bias of reporters and editors. A lot can just be put on ignore, since we'll soon enough know how things will turn out, and participants in FADG don't have much chance of directly influencing much of anything anyway.