Comments on: Foreign Languages and SF

By: T. Greer

T. Greer — Thu, 26 May 2016 13:41:01 +0000

The average SF soldier speaks the language he learns, but does so poorly, and does not retain what he learns. The trouble is that language fluency that can be maintained is mostly about reaching a ‘critical mass’ of language knowledge (a low C1 or high B3 on the European scale), but SF guys only take classes up to the B1-B2 level. So they lose what they learn quickly.

There was an article about this in Small Wars Journal a few years back. Ping me if I forget to come back and post it later

By: 18C

18C — Thu, 26 May 2016 02:38:04 +0000

From the viewpoint of one 18X graduating in 2002, the language portion of the Q-Course could be omitted, in most cases. Most guys were not put into a language course relevant to their future needs or did not learn the language beyond a level that a two week course could have achieved. I was sent to 10th Group with others learning Arabic, French and Russian. As a French student, I had classmates with a DLAB score in the 70′s while mine was almost 120. This worked out well as I was able to score a 2+/3 on the DLPT and make a few hundred extra per month in proficiency pay. Few, if any, of the cat III or IV students pulled that off.

Using a terp is a whole different subject. It was entirely necessary on all of my combat deployments, and makes the SF mission possible at all. The downside is that guys misuse them and treat them like errands boys instead of language translators.

Until the electronic in-ear translator hits the market, SF teams would benefit more from a class on how to utilize terps than a random 4 or 6 month language class at Bragg.

By: Lu An Li

Lu An Li — Wed, 25 May 2016 22:28:03 +0000

SF has to have language skills, but not so intense. SF is not for kicking down doors but building a guerrilla fighting force. They know some language, but are not fluent.

“Here is how you clear your weapon.”

“Here is how you fire your weapon.”

“Here is how you clean your weapon.”

A Jedburgh in France was a three-man team, at least one fluent in the French tongue, perhaps a native-born speaker.