In the ’60s, the U.S. Department of Defense grew increasingly worried about containing the USSR and funded departments of South Asian Studies at many American universities. Ironically, many of the beneficiaries of the grants were exactly the kind of free spirits that granite-cut DoD types abhorred. As time went on, this faculty started facing 2nd gen desis asking to learn about modern South Asia rather than psychosexual analyses of Radha-Krishna, and asking for native language instructors rather than those one step phonetically removed.
Today the Hindoo Peril arises anew, and this time around it’s that the Axis of Non-English has imbibed capitalism too deeply (thanks, Joby):
President Bush is asking for Congress for $114 million in next yearÂ’s budget to push Americans into uncharted linguistic territory under what is being called “National Security Language Initiative…” Hindi has been identified as one of the critical foreign languages that Americans need to learn… Americans are also being urged to study Farsi, Arabic, Chinese and other languages… [Link]
Note the clumping of the language of potential military enemies with economic competitors. OTOH, since oil supply is an economic chokepoint, maybe it’s all about dem billz over at Larnin’ ’bout Furriners, Part Deux.
Hey, you might even get a Tamil, Gujarati or Telugu class resurrected out of this. All in the name of knowing the ‘enemy,’ of course 😉
I’ve been wanting to learn Hindi but I couldn’t find a class. Hopefully one will pop up soon because of this new funding.
-__- Why couldn’t this have happened BEFORE I graduated high school? It’s sometimes embarassing knowing how to speak Spanish better than any Indian language.
Interesting huh, under a different guise this would have been blasted as multicultural mumbo jumbo.
I was channel surfing when I saw a call in show about this on CNN or Fox where I was surprised to see that the majority of the viewers were in favour of the idea.
I was channel surfing when I saw a call in show about this on CNN or Fox where I was surprised to see that the majority of the viewers were in favour of the idea.
Please stop watching Faux News.
This relates to my ‘Learning Hindi’ post from the summer. Well, a little.
and the reverse story (US Military / society-writ-large not knowing enough about other cultures) gets blasted by the same folks as idiotic parochialism. Can’t win either way, I suppose.
FWIW, I took a malayalam class back in the day @ U of Penn and the courseware was originally created with a grant from…. the Defense Language Institute. Language study isn’t just about the enemy (although that certainly has a certain priority) but also your allies. Functioning as a “Liason officer” to a foriegn military is a pretty important step up in the career path of many officers….
“National security,” as defined by the government, is defined by both economic and “potential military enemies.” Don’t be insulted, but rather be complimented, that the U.S. considers India to be a significant economic force in the world. Anyone doing business there would be greatly advantaged by knowing at least a few of the many languages that grace India.
Re:
Please stop reading the blatant liberal drivel from Little India and the NYTimes. You have to read multiple sources to get the whole story nowadays…….
I, for one, would love to see some Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati or Telugu courses offered in college vs. the typical offerings in various European languages, many of which will have no economic implications, or at least as many as Latin!
its either fox news or the clinton news network haha… freaking liberals 🙂 but yeah, it is pretty awesome that theyre starting to offer more indian language course offferings at colleges… ive heard of a malayalam program at University of Texas-Austin… has anyone heard of it?
Nope. But you can get an entire BA in south asian languages @ UBC in Canada – well, in Vancouver, also notably one of the only places on the planet where national-born kid citizens have been known to hit their primary education without knowing the national languages (either of them!) Seriously though, linguistic diversity is a good idea, whatever the reasoning behind it. 🙂
Columbia University started offering Telugu and other smaller languages this year. Don’t know if it was brought on by government funding or what.