|
|
DLI Alumni Association (DLIAA) |
|
_files/Gopher.GIF)
_files/DLIAA-Best3.GIF)
1. Message from
the president
2. Retirements/Resignations/Reassignments (1
Jan 07 - 31 Mar 07)
3. In memoriam (1 Jan 07 - 31 Mar 07)
4. Calendar of events (FY 07-08)
5. DLIFLC provides support to the warfighter and linguist. -
By Natela Cutter
5. Russian alumn publishes book: "Past Imperfect, Present
Progressive. - By Kerry Wood
7, Who is an Arab? - By Rick Francona
8. The Stuttering aspect of things. - By James B. Burris
9. Voluntary
Money Contributions -
Send to DLIAA, P.O Box 5653, Presidio of Monterey, CA 93944
10.
DLI Memorabilia. These make excellent birthdays presents
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.
Message from the
Remember: Just
as "the map is not the territory,"
"the word is not the thing" it represents.
Quotes
by Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa. As in the past, I look forward to hearing from you about your thoughts,
suggestions and stories. You can write to me at dliaa1@dli-alumni.org.
Benjamin De La Selva, President.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Retirements/Resignations/Reassignments (01 Jan
- 31 Mar 07)
Enrique (Rick) Berrios - Spanish Teacher, Chairperson, and Academic Specialist
Edward Moos - Spanish Teacher, Chairperson, and Curriculum Specialist
Andrei Pashin - Russian Teacher &
Chairperson, and Immersion Coordinator
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.
In Memoriam (01 Jan to 31 Mar 07)
Charlie Middaugh, (16Aug17-28Dec06), Civilian Personnel Officer in the 1980s passed away on December 28th, 2006
Sataa
(Sid) Siddeek, 84, (28Apr22 - 11Nov06)
- Arabic Teacher
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Calendar of events (Fiscal Year 06-07)
-
The Digital Stream Conference - Last week of March, 2008,
at
- Teachers of English to Speakers
of Other Languages (TESOL) Conference - TESOL is holding its
42st Annual Convention and Exhibit, March 2008. Many DLI faculty attend this conference. For information about
2007's conference go to: http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=1244&DID=6071
-
-
Annual Program Review
and Defense Foreign Language Steering Committee (APR/DFLSC) Conference - Scheduled for Wednesday, 25th April 2007 - Presidio of Monterey.
-
Language Day –Friday, 18 May
2007 (Presidio of Monterey) - For more
information visit the DLI Alumni Association website, at: http://www.dli-alumni.org/LanguageDay/LanguageDay07.htm
- Installation Spring Celebration - Friday, 4 May 2007 - Tin Barn (Live music, food, drinks, and dancing)
- Memorial Day Parade and Memorialization of Fallen Linguists - Friday, 25 May 2007 - Soldier's Field
-
DLIFLC Offsite -
Venue and
exact date to be announced
-
Worldwide Language Competition (WLC) –
Date and location to be determined
-
CLPM Seminar Normally held in November
- Location to be determined
-
DLI 66th Anniversary - Modest Celebration, probably
with a Banquet - Thursday,
1Nov 07, Presidio of Monterey
- The American Council
on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Conference - November 2007, - For
more information go to http://www.actfl.org/.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. DLIFLC provides support to the warfighter and linguist
By Natela A. Cutter
In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Department of Defense
took a closer look at the linguistic and cultural preparedness of our nation’s
military and more precisely, at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language
Center, as the government’s premiere provider of foreign language training.
A landmark institution since 1941 when Japanese-American Soldiers were first
trained to become translators and interpreters in WWII, DLIFLC has transformed
several times and today teaches 24 languages with courses lasting from 26
to 64 weeks, depending on the difficulty of the language.
“Our military missions are so different today,” said DLIFLC Chief of Staff,
Lt. Col. Deborah Hanagan, speaking about the Cold War era, when Russian and
other East European languages were the largest programs at DLIFLC. “It is
no longer the case where we have to defend Germany from invading Russians
coming across the Fulda Gap. Now we have to interact with the populations
in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Basic language programs at DLIFLC fluctuate with changing international situations
and the needs of DoD. In the post 9/11 era, the largest program is no longer
Russian, but Arabic. What has really changed at the DoD level, and thus the
Institute itself, is the realization that our armed forces need to be ready
at any given time with linguist capability in many less commonly taught languages.
“If someone had told me six years ago that we would be teaching languages
such as Urdu, Kurdish, Uzbek or Hindi, I would have told them they were crazy,”
said Hanagan. But today, a strategic language list is issued each year by
DoD, a Language Transformation Road Map has been implemented and structural
changes were made to create Senior Language Authority positions within all
the Services, Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, and Defense Agencies to analyze
and guide the military’s linguistic needs.
Only months after the 9/11 tragedy, DLIFLC set up a task force to build courses
and train linguists in the major languages of Afghanistan, (Dari and Pashto),
as well as Kurdish, Uzbek and Georgian. The Global War on Terrorism Task Force
has since transformed into the Emerging Languages Task Force (ELTF), where
languages of strategic importance, such as Hindi, Urdu, Kurdish, and Indonesian
are taught.
“We no longer wait for a region to fall into crisis,” said Capt. Angi Carsten,
Associate Dean of ELTF. “We need to be proactive, not reactive. We need to
anticipate what languages will be needed in the future and start building
course materials now. As soon as a language program matures in our department,
meaning that the course has been built, we move it out to one of the eight
schools and focus on something new. Dari and Pashto are examples of maturing
programs,” she said.
On the DoD level, the need to increase military language training called for
an infusion of money into the Institute to be used on technology, curriculum
development, and hiring new staff, as well as ramping up the production of
language survival, and cultural familiarization materials, needed for deploying
service members.
“We have basically doubled the size of our faculty, staff and student load,
while our budget has tripled,” said Warren Hoy, Chief of Mission Support for
the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. DLIFLC’s budget was
$77 M in 2001, while fiscal year 2006’s budget was $197 M.
DLIFLC today has over 1,500 professional language instructors and is expecting
to hire another several hundred teachers in 2007. The student load has grown
since 2001 and is now over 3,500 at any given time. Linguists come from all
four branches of the military, the U.S. Coast Guard and other DoD agencies.
The Institute graduates more than 2,000 students per year and has degree granting
authority whereby qualified students can receive an Associate of Arts Degree
in Foreign Language.
“Technology plays a big role in the classroom because the younger generations
are used to having access to information at the tip of their fingers. We now
have interactive white boards in every classroom, issue MP3 players or iPods
to students and are in the process of providing them tablet PCs,” said Associate
Dean of one of DLIFLC’s Middle East Schools, Maj. John Hoffmenschen
But DLIFLC’s work does not stop with the Basic Course. The Institute also
teaches Intermediate, Advanced and Refresher courses to returning students
at the Directorate of Continuing Education. When units are not able to send
linguists back to DLIFLC, teachers are sent to them, via Mobile Training Teams.
These teams are sent to outlying regions to teach courses for weeks at a time.
Distance learning has also become a popular means of keeping linguists’ language
skills current. The Institute provides Video Tele-Training courses, whereby
teachers in Monterey can converse with students located around the world.
In addition, DLIFLC maintains 12 permanent Language Training Detachments (LTD)
located throughout the continental United States and Hawaii.
Aside from producing basic language course materials, the Institute’s Curriculum
Development Directorate has been turning out Language Survival Kits (LSK)
since the crises in Somalia and Haiti in the early 1990’s. The LSKs are built
for the non-linguist and in 2006, more than 200,000 were sent to deploying
service members. The LSKs are available in over 50 languages and consist of
pocket-size booklets with a CD. They cover emergency survival phrases and
most languages have additional modules ranging in topics from search and raid
or medical terminology to civil affairs. Products can be ordered by going
to www.dliflc.edu
“It is absolutely vital that every Soldier know a little bit about the culture,
the do’s and don’ts and know some words and phrases just to get by,” said
the Chief Military Language Instructor (MLI) of one of the Middle East schools,
who asked to remain anonymous. MLIs are Non-Commissioned and Petty Officers
who have gone through the basic course, speak the target language fluently,
have served a tour using their language, and have returned to teach at DLIFLC.
“I did a lot of translation, for commanders, doctors, locals, etc., and knowing
the culture was very helpful, especially when there were misunderstandings,”
she said about her tour in Iraq and experience in Afghanistan.
The newest product to hit the streets this spring will be the Iraqi Headstart
program. Using computer animation and cutting-edge technology, this product
consists of a 10-day course that teaches survival phrases in the Iraqi dialect.
These materials will be a more powerful teaching tool thanks to the student’s
ability work on interactive exercises, hear and repeat phrases, and test his/her
knowledge at the end of the 10-day program.
In addition to LSKs, there are other useful web-based materials available
to linguists and the general public, located at http://www.LingNet.org.
Information on the site includes area studies called “Countries in Perspective,”
providing information on history, geography and socio-political settings of
nations. There are online language courses available and over 100,000 reading
and listening lessons in a dozen languages under the Global Language Online
Support System.
Why put so much emphasis on language learning and culture? “It is all about
winning the hearts and minds of the citizens (Iraqi and Afghani, etc,) …because
we don’t want them to harbor terrorists within their ranks. It is a whole
new way of using our military force,” said Hanagan.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6.
Russian alumn publishes book: "Past Imperfect, Present Progressive"
By Kerry Wood, a 1962 graduate of the Russian Basic Course.
Email
from Kerry Wood to the DLI Alumni Association: Ben:
I thought you might be interested in this clip from a memoir that I am self-publishing—"Past
Imperfect, Present Progressive." My book, which deals with my life,
education, family and teaching career, contains a bit more about my time
at DLI (or ALS as we then referred to it) but I have left out some sections
that I feared might be embarrassing to certain people.. The book will be
available in February (2007), at which time anyone interested will be able
to get more information at my website www.kerrymwood.com.
I hope the embedded text comes through; if not I can reformat it and send
it again as an attachment.
During my stint at the Presidio, I had a visit from my former college roommate
Frank Porter, then a Marine officer stationed at Camp Pendleton in Southern
California. Frank drove onto the base, parked, and started seeking the office
of the company commander. The first enlisted man he encountered was sitting
on a bench in the sunshine reading not a comic book but a novel by Dostoevski.
Frank asked him for directions and was flabbergasted by the precise and
well-phrased response. It was a far cry from the language he was used to
from the troops he commanded in Marine artillery observer training. He said
he had the feeling that he was back on the Harvard Law School campus from
which he had recently graduated.
Nearly all the Russian faculty members were accomplished and fascinating
people. Mr. Tarakus was a virtuoso on the balalaika. Another instructor
was writing an opera in his spare time. There were a half dozen singers
of professional ability, most notably the gentleman who directed
the Russian Choir Mr. Nicolai Nicolaevich Vorobiof.
Their command of English was excellent, although not always perfect, but
most were fluent in German and French along with their native Russian. Many
had horror stories they could tell about their lives in the Soviet Union
and their experiences in World War II, but most of them preferred not to
go into detail about this period of their lives.
I had good friends from Fort Ord days like Al Stillman and Ross Stockwell,
and I had gotten to know Martin Vitz and Clark Neher pretty well at Fort
Holabird, Maryland. In fact, while we were on some kind of detail at Holabird,
Clark and I got to chatting and discovered we had met at a party in Palo
Alto some years earlier. Clark had been in Sally’s class at Stanford and
was engaged to a young woman from Palo Alto and Stanford whom Sally had
known for years.
Absolute beginners of Russian study at the Presidio were easily recognized
by the red covers on the texts that they carried. We referred to this period
of time as the “shto etah” phase “Shto
etah?” means “What is this?” The question was repeated ad nauseam
as the instructor held up or pointed to an object, and we responded individually
or in chorus with the Russian for “This is a table…a blackboard…chalk,”
etc.
Soon we graduated to the first of several dozens of instructional books
with gray covers. The first hour of every day we recited the dialogue passage
we had memorized the night before, and the teacher corrected our pronunciation.
I began to notice smiles on the faces of various teachers when I recited
my parts in drills or dialogues. I took my teacher aside during a break
period and asked what I was doing the native speakers found so funny. “Meester
Wood,” she explained. “You have told us that you just came from working
as teacher of French. You are speaking Russian with French accent. This
is funny because all older Russians remember people in Soviet Union who
tried to sound cultured and cosmopolitan by purposely speaking our language
with such accent.” I immediately set about eliminating the unconscious mannerism
from my diction.
Thinking about one of our teachers always reminds me of a particular episode.
We soldier-students had a tendency to joke and play around during class.
Gospozha P. would try to be businesslike and serious but had a hard time
keeping her own amusement from showing on her expressive face. One time
when the class was becoming particularly giddy, she attempted to look stern
and said, “Gospoda! (Gentlemen!) I’m
going to give you a TREAT!” We all smiled expectantly. Realizing that there
had been some miscommunication, she went to the blackboard and wrote out
the word THREAT. We explained the correct pronunciation of the word. “English
language is crazy,” she said. “EAT is said with long E sound. Russians have
trouble to say TH sound. So is logical that I say TREAT.”
Of course, we butchered the Russian language, particularly in the early
weeks. But many of our instructors did some odd things in their attempts
to speak English. Gospodin H. explaining the formation of some Russian letter,
came out with “Writingly speaking this letter starts with a down,” which
eventually we came to realize was not our customary English pattern but
directly translated Russian. Even though there is no W sound in Russian,
we would hear sentences like “If you don’t now (instead of ‘know’) your
wowels and werbs, you don’t now the language.” My last name was spelled
and pronounced VOOD in Russian. I even briefly picked up the nickname of
“Bug” because when spelled in Cyrillics, my last name comes out Byg. Several
of the instructors had trouble with the names of two students named White
and Wyatt. “Is same name,” they would protest. Mr. M. would laboriously
render the two names as OO-AH-EAT and EH-YOTT.
Although I never got to know him personally, there was one Language School
Russian student a section or two ahead of me who was rather noticeable when
wearing fatigues rather than the Class A uniform. His head was too large
to be accommodated by any of the army’s fatigue uniform caps of the time.
Therefore, he had to wear the soft material cap that was reserved for such
situations as KP (or kitchen police) duty. Naturally, he picked up the nickname
of Golova, which is the Russian word
for “head.” Ordinarily this circumstance would not be worthy of mention,
but Golova’s American name was Garry Utley, and Garrick Utley is today a
prominent, distinguished, and easily recognized news correspondent for CNN
television, and previously for ABC and NBC. I keep waiting for him to be
on a call-in talk show so that I can contact him and see how he responds
to being referred to by his old Army nickname.
Another Army classmate at the Language School bears mentioning. Dan Matuszewski
was our class’s top student from day one. He had grown up in Chicago with
English speaking parents, but the grandparents who were also part of the
household spoke only Polish. Dan’s earliest school years were in Polish-speaking
schools. Knowing Polish does not assure immediate facility in Russian language,
but Dan’s Catholic secondary schooling and studies at Loyola of Chicago
involved several years of Greek and Latin study which, along with his great
ear and natural talent, made him a Russian student who caused even the native
speaking faculty to shake their heads in disbelief at his early fluency.
The following eitorial reviews were taken from www.amazon.com.
Book Description. Past Imperfect, Present Progressive is a gallimaufry of reminiscences by a vocal member of the Silent Generation. Kerry Wood traces his childhood during the late Depression and World War II to adulthood and seniority in stories and poems born of experiences as a four-year-old consigned to a military boarding school, an awkward adolescent, an undergraduate at Yale, and a career high-school teacher. Enjoy moments of melancholy punctuating a lifetime of exuberant playfulness, in such unlikely areas as Shakespearean tragedy, English grammar, poetry analysis, Scrabble, spelling bees, and service in the lowest ranks of the U.S. Army.
From
the Author. I am confident that my memoir will be entertaining and interesting
not only to my extended family, former schoolmates, students, and colleagues
but also to word buffs, products of Catholic education, stroke survivors,
ironists, fellow poetasters, and present, past, and future teachers of English/Language
Arts. It is the product of a six-year labor of love--reflections of family,
friends, teachers, and students whose acquaintance I have been fortunate
(or unfortunate) to make. Frank McCourt would enjoy it because I am a "teacher
man" of Irish extraction, if not birth. Doris Kearns Goodwin would
spot her influences. Light verse persons Willard R. Espy and Richard Armour,
both dead now, have sent me congratulatory letters for chapters they read
during their lifetimes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.
WHO IS AN ARAB?
By Lt Col Rick Francona, U.S. Air Force (Retired).
Lt Col Rick Francona is a triple DLI graduate. He graduated from the Vietnamese Basic course (Nov 71) at the DLI South West Branch in El Paso, TX. Subsequently he graduated from Arabic Basic (Dec 74) and Arabic Intermediate (May 78) at the Presidio of Monterey. Rick also served as a Military Language Instructor (Arabic language) at DLI from 1978 to 1979. Lt Col Francona's biography is found at http://www.writers.net/writers/4306
Although this might seem like a silly question, the issue can be quite complex. In times past, there was an accepted ethnic definition of Arabs as those Semitic people whose ancestors originally inhabited what is now known as the Arabian Peninsula. With the spread of Islam beginning in the 7th Century came the spread of the Arabic language, complicating the original definition.
In 1946, the Arab League sought to define an Arab to determine which countries would qualify for membership. The definition adopted by the organization was: “An Arab is a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples." Why Somalia and Comoros, who fail in all three criteria, were accepted as member states in the Arab League remains a mystery.
Today, the general rule of thumb is that anyone who speaks Arabic as his or her native language is an Arab, making the term “Arab” an ethno-linguistic identifier. The term encompasses between 250 and 300 million people, mostly concentrated in what are defined as the 23 Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa. There are also significant numbers of Arabs resident in non-Arab countries in the Middle East (Iran, Turkey, Israel, etc.) and Africa, as well as North America, South America and especially Europe.
For most people now identified as Arabs, there is no specific ethnic designation but rather a mixture of ethnic and cultural identities. In North Africa, many of today’s “Arabs” are of Berber or Moor stock. Egyptians are primarily of Hamitic origin, and the Levant has persons of Turkic, Caucasian and European ancestry. What binds them all together as “Arabs” is the Arabic language and to a large extent Islam.
In some “Arab” countries, there are non-Arabs, and also unique groups of people who speak Arabic as their native language but dispute the definition of themselves as Arabs. In Lebanon, some of the native Arabic-speaking Christian groups prefer to identify themselves as Phoenicians, while in Egypt some of the Coptic Christians avoid the use of the term “Arab.”
Iraq is certainly considered an Arab country; however, Arabic is spoken natively by only 80 percent of the population, and is only one of the two official languages. Kurdish is also an official language, and the Kurds – ethnically distinguishable - definitely do not consider themselves to be Arabs. There are other ethnic groups in Iraq that are also not Arabs, such as the Assyrians, Turcomans and Chaldeans. Interestingly, many of these people do speak Arabic as their native language.
Bottom line: there is no universal definition of who is an Arab. If you speak Arabic as your native language and want to be identified as an Arab, you are an Arab.
