I gasped when I watched Peter Jackson and his crew gather on stage to collect their Oscars. It wasn't their uncanny resemblance to the hobbits they had brought to life on the silver screen, but their wonderful, true-to-life British and Kiwi accents -- a shocking rarity on American television.
"Who cares?" I hear ye sigh -- those of us who don't wrap our tongues around an American twang. In short, language is the greatest key to understanding cognition, and if you can comprehend the 'whys-and-hows' of someone's speech, you'll unfathom a wealth of secrets they simply couldn't communicate to you before.
Last night I listened to Minnie Driver spout off some awful spiel reminiscent of Dick Van Dyke's chimney sweep escapades on the rooftops of London with Mary Poppins. Then my mother calls to ask why "Nat-ahr-shah" on "Dawson's Creek" speaks with a plum in her mouth. I can only venture that her actual British accent just isn't believable enough for Americans who hear the real shebang once in a blue moon.
These dialects don't create stereotypes that are dangerous or offensive, just a little confusing. Our television-friendly accents lend themselves to images of lunching with the Queen and performing as a one-man band on the street corner. I'm sorry to break it to you, but that's not how most British choose to spend their time.
So if poor communication leads to problems understanding British society, and we speak the same language as you, imagine the issues wrought in sending men and women over to the Middle East whose Arabic fluency is decidedly dubious.
Anthropologist Franz Boas realized he needed to learn the dialect of the Inuit he was living amongst, so as to truly understand why they acted as they did during the early 20th Century. Old Franz never looked back, and current anthropologists wouldn't either.
It would be hard to make sense of a ceremonial gathering in Uganda without knowing their strain of the Bantu phylum, so why do we consistently send troops to disaster stricken areas of the globe who can't offer words of comfort? Language doesn't need to stay reigned to the keen anthropologist; it offers learning curves for any individual who lives in a community. Barring my mate's uncle who lives by himself on an island off northern Australia, no one is exempt.
Government agencies across Europe and America have recognized the distinct lack of Arabic language scholars available to help interpret the mess in the Middle East. The BBC published an article that claimed an Arabic translator could demand as much as $200,000 a year for their key skills. That includes a little 'danger money' for being in the line of fire, but it mostly compensates their acute awareness of the linguistic cognition of Arabic-speaking people, and the readiness with which they can provide them with an accurate mouthpiece.
Crucially, the words and tone someone adopts for their patois directly relates to their emotional and mental state. Sarcasm creates a stumbling block over here, because Americans don't necessarily use the same tones for a comic end, but at least it's only sarcasm.
Now American troops find the tables turned in war-torn Iraq because their bravado speech patterns fail to comfort distraught civilians; they don't hear what's being said, just how. By learning to speak Arabic, soldiers will learn the 'hows' of the new language and, even if their vocabulary is limited, they will be able to let their voices follow the undulations of the Iraqis.
Arabic interpreters are the only people who can lead us down the hazy path of Iraqi reconstruction and Israeli-Palestinian warfare, by telling us what the Middle East is currently screaming at us in mute. No matter where your opinion lies concerning the Patriot Act, at least applaud its call for more translators in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Let's start dismantling the notion that all Arabic speakers are terrorists, and start communicating with them in their own cultural and emotional terms. We have the greatest weapon at our disposal and it doesn't include the words "destruction" and "mass." Have a think about that one. In Arabic, if you can.
Katie McCrory is a history junior and a one-woman band. Reach her at kathleen-ellen.mccrory@asu.edu.
