"Tonight, another friend mentioned the abundence of Americans "studying Arabic" here in Jordan. Funnily enough, however, it seems that even after spending months "studying", none of these people could speak more than a few words or sentences. "

You've obviously never tried to speak, say, Spanish with the vst majority of Americans who have studied it. :-)

Bah, so much for my plans to take Arabic in the ME next year. I swear it's legitimate interest in the language!

Sad thing is, I am going to sound exactly like one of these guys, at least until I find some honest work. (And Arabic is a very very very very hard language to speak, especially for monolingual Americans. I've been here four friggin' years and I'm still pretty stumbly when I talk.)

What do I think.

I think it's a rather typical, poorly thought out Arab paranoid conspiracy theory (which sadly resembles the Bumpkin paranoid conspiracy theories prevalent everywhere in the world).

Knowing Books and Amigo, the reason they go there is quite simply for comfort. It's true also lots of NGO/contractor types like going there as well (some may be Agency as well), but it is for the same reason. Liberal atmosphere, free drinking environment, relativey open and less stiff than Jor culture generally (relative to a single American).

In re studying Arabic, as Tom said, Arabic is a bloody hard language. Only obsession and my typical ability to convince myself I am moumtaz, as well as a genuinely good ear got me up to functional fluency.

For the wave of young, middle America students flowing into Arabic studies (probably yes with CIA in mind, mind you), Jordan is a "safe" place to study. The counter problem is of course with a large community of English speakers - esp. Jordanians like yourself for example - it is doubly difficult to get anywhere unless one is rather disciplined.

Given the United States has what I might characterise as a highly indifferent history of language training and learning, and given many are learning more reading and writing than speaking due to the Mod Stan Arabic teaching that tilts heavily to formalism..... Well don't be suprised if they speak Arabic so indifferently as to make a camel piss in shame.

The "military" bearing is a complete misread, I should add- having known Agency people (friends and the like), the real deal and not mere poseurs either- they're not shave headed types.

Rather the Jordanians are mistaking Mormon and Mid West American nerdiness for military bearing (of course in the context of the sorts that the Books and Amigo crowds were used to in the past, this batch of Americans is far less hippy or leftish, far more straightlaced and rightish, again making them seem strange to the past crops - I saw the change over while I was there).

Finally, having amigos in the real Agency, I can attest directly that they haven't the bloody manpower to do such a thing, and the real Agency understands what an utter waste such monitoring would be, above all since the Jor Moukhaberat do it for them for a fraction of the cost.

They need people to interact with Jor Moukh., not people to monitor Books....

Yours truly,

The Lounsbury

Oh, a note to eerie: don't worry about it. Only white guys get to be (imagined as) CIA. Everyone will assume you're 2nd or 3rd-gen Palestinian or Jordanian-American (or Canadian) come back to find her roots.

"Oh, a note to eerie: don't worry about it. Only white guys get to be (imagined as) CIA. Everyone will assume you're 2nd or 3rd-gen Palestinian or Jordanian-American (or Canadian) come back to find her roots."

They may not imagine her to be CIA, but she will be presumed an informer of some kind.

"Given the United States has what I might characterise as a highly indifferent history of language training and learning..."

Which, I would hasten to say, extends even to English-language learning; the number of American native English speakers, even educated ones, who have a truly poor understanding of the structure of the English language is absolutely terrifying. My college Russian professor, who also taught at an intensive summer immersion program, said she had to spend the first week of the program teaching English grammar (and she was a native Russian speaker) before she could even touch on Russian grammar; how can you figure out how to decline a word if you don't know what role it's playing in the sentence? And that was longer ago than I care to think about, but I imagine linguistic instruction in the U.S. hasn't exactly improved since then.

Not that I speak Arabic or anything, but I imagine there would be analogous issues in teaching any foreign language.

Oh man, you just reminded me of my HS English teacher, who was hilarious. He looked at us once, after we'd given him an especially hard time, and said "Most of you are studying a foreign language too, so you can be illiterate in TWO languages."
Still makes me smile thinking about it.

Tom/Matthew: I can deal with being an informant if it decreases the number of marriage proposals offered in a day.

Lounsbury: You should hook up with your "boy in Baghdad" again. The "ain't no pimp" line was priceless.

"Tom/Matthew: I can deal with being an informant if it decreases the number of marriage proposals offered in a day."

It won't; it'll only increase them. ("Not only did I marry an American and get a green card but she works with the CIA, we have it made. And of course she's probably really Jewish.")

Sad, to say the above is not really satire.

Yeah, maybe you could be the Canadian Femme Nikita.

CIA has its own language programs.