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Comment by hsmyers | Hacker News Reader

Great article on one of my favorite subjects. In the 80's using an IBM PC with a Hercules graphics card I wrote an Arabic word processor so my partner could write to his family in Farsi. The problems of right to left and differing letter shapes depending on leading, middle and ending position was an interesting challenge---not to mention the problem of vowels that occur above and below the letters. That said, I could have done without the attack on DLI---actually having worked with graduates (speaking Korean and Vietnamese) they spoke as natives including idiomatic expressions. Oh well we all have biases and the rest of the posting was excellent!

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I have no doubt that DLI students are at least as accomplished as any civilian language learners. My beef is with the idea that most Arabic education in this country is done for the purposes of military occupation, but as you point out that has nothing to do with the substance of the post.

It really wasn't so much the politics of the post that bothered me (I'm a "pre-occupation" Arabic DLI graduate whose politics probably closely match your own) -- it was your mischaracterization of the 63+ week program there as limited to "hobbies and the weather," said from the comfort of a (somehow more extensive?) 9 week program at MIIS. I have a stack of Arabic books, about as tall as me, from the DLI course that shows this for the hyperbole this is. The idea that someone is favorably comparing the extent of MIIS Arabic curriculum to DLIFLC is frankly just a bit laughable.

I intended that more as a comment on how frustrating it can be to study Arabic, where years of effort leave you barely able to follow a TV broadcast, and not as a slight on the DLI, which is probably as intensive a program as anyone can pursue.

I can see how you can read that comment as a dig at the DLI, but that wasn't my intent.

Thanks, good to hear (worth noting that I didn't mean my reply as a dig at MIIS, either). I really did enjoy the article in other respects; I have a severe love for the language, even to this day.

Your glib recital of orthodox campus political flapdoodle and breezy contempt for those whose "grim" attitudes come from years of tough, real-world experience mark YOU as the real frat boy.

I've had many experiences over the years with both Monterey and DLI, and one thing you neglected to mention was that the average "frat boy" at DLI is in his forties, about 15 years older than the average at Monterey. While the merry Monterey kids tend to be fresh from the trenches at some campus political activist club, the average DLI student has spent those extra fifteen or so years on the ground, in military or diplomatic postings, dealing with life and death issues deep within other cultures. If they seem grimmer than you, it's quite possible that they have lost some of your frat boy illusions during those fifteen years off campus.

I found your article interesting but I was really distracted by your characterization of DLI students as douchebag fraternity boys who love The Fountainhead and think all Arabs are "scary men in turbans." Totally doesn't jibe with the guys I know.

I wasn't referring to the DLI students there, but to a certain type of student I've encountered in (civilian) university Arabic programs. I've never met a DLI graduate but I know instructors who have taught there and they have a uniformly high opinion of their students.

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