Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Why Can't They Learn the Local Language?

From ABC News:
Of the 1,000 U.S. employees at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, only 10 have a
working knowledge of Arabic, according to the State Department.
That is still a slight improvement from last year when, according to the Iraq Study Group, six people in the embassy spoke Arabic.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Because it's a hard language! Some would call that an over 50% increase, which is a good start! Everyone is learning a Chinese dialect. It's the new economy!

steveegg said...

It may be a hard language, but I do expect Foggy Bottom to be a lot more efficient in teaching the local language to its employees. Indeed, the right-to-left reading of the written Arabic should come naturally to the diplomats ;-)

Anonymous said...

Not to mention, it has a certain "doodle" quality to it.