That's Impressive

Last night on my way home from classes I heard something pretty amazing on the Arabic BBC: a full interview, in Arabic, with a spokesperson for the British Foreign Ministry. What made him so impressive is that he wasn't a native speaker. He had learned Arabic the hard way; he put in the long, grueling years to learn this extraordinarily difficult language with enough fluency and confidence to explain and defend British foreign policy.

In all the time that I've watched Al Jazeera or the Arabic BBC, this is the first time I've heard a non-native speaker do this (I think). I suppose it's possible that I've heard speakers who were so fluent that I couldn't tell they weren't native, but it doesn't seem likely. Given Arabic's difficulty, I expect that most Arabic-speaking representatives of governments are native speakers.

This speaker wasn't perfect. He had a distinct British accent and spoke slowly and carefully, as though it took a tremendous amount of concentration to put his thoughts into words. He made mistakes and stumbled once or twice. Despite all that, I thought his interview was really impressive and showed great sincerity. I don't know what Arab listeners made of him, but I have to think that many of them would appreciate this effort.

Karen Hughes, former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, recently stressed the need for the US to train linguists capable of this kind of engagement:

"We need better language training of our personnel. Most of State's training teaches officers to be able to engage in conversations, but not television interviews. We need effective spokespeople who are able to communicate on television in key languages."