Submitted by Lisa Bachiller, Jan 19, 2007 23:23

I'm a former DoS employee who spent a year in Iraq in 2005. It was an amazing experience, but I was constantly frustrated by my inability to adequately communicate and develop important relationships with my Iraqi counterparts. We had translators available now and then, but often our work was hampered by not having their help when needed or having effective translation and writing of documents. As a result, I returned home and began studying Arabic 6-8 hours a day through a variety of methods (University class, Rosetta Stone, Arabic Advantage, Arabic TV, and others). I also now teach English to an Iraqi immigrant family, which helps me give back while learning the Iraqi dialect. I absolutely agree that we need to emphasize languages for our younger children, especially Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Farsi. I would also like to say that Arabic is relatively easy to learn compared to English. We learned to read and write Arabic in my University class in just two weeks. The language is phonetic in spelling and is easy to pronounce once you decipher the 28 letter alphabet. Writing is a breeze after an initial discomfort with right to left direction and the script, but really, it's just cursive writing backwards! Thanks for an important article!

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