“The popularity of a language is generally a function of the relationship between two countries,” says Siri Karm Singh Khalsa, President of the Boston Language Institute. If that’s the case, it makes sense that students would choose to focus on languages from countries with which the United States has successful business relationships. Perhaps studying an economically relevant language is a wise move for the immediate future, at least for anyone who aspires to be part of a money-grubbing corporate machine.
Meanwhile, languages that aren’t “useful” in the greedy scheme of things may be destined to near-extinction in American schools. At least temporarily; there is an expected ebb and flow of academic disciplines, and what tongues are being abandoned today, could flourish once more if and when they become economically, or politically, relevant.
Wars of words
Given the United States’ current mission of destruction in the Middle East, it’s not too surprising that undergraduates are increasingly studying Arabic.
“Right after 9/11, everyone wanted to study Arabic and Farsi,” Khalsa says. “My first thought was that this horrible thing had just happened and people were reaching out, but it turns out that they all wanted to learn Arabic in eight weeks and then go to work for the CIA or FBI. Before 9/11 we were getting three calls a week for Arabic, and post 9/11, we received around 15 a day. [Interest in language] is very much influenced by international events.”
This post-9/11 linguistic trend has crept onto college campuses as well, where Arabic is being studied with the same fervor as economically friendly Asian languages are.
Dwindling interest in specific languages — especially Russian, which, a generation ago students were encouraged to master — is an enormous threat to the smaller academic departments at universities such as Tufts, Brandeis, and Harvard. On the Brandeis campus, though Miller is pleased that smaller classes mean a greater opportunity for curriculum experimentation, she is concerned about what low class enrollment could mean for the department as a whole.
“I do think that globalization has had an effect, and it’s extremely unfortunate,” she says. “Universities are so strapped financially anyway in terms of creating new positions that they have to go where the strong demand is. The study of Russian is not a priority. We try to understand, and to make the courses as engaging as we can.”
“It’s endemic to teaching Russian,” agrees David Sloane, a professor of Russian at Tufts University. “Faculty are really pressed to keep the Russian program vibrant.
“Arabic is very popular right now,” says Sloane. “There are probably 40 or 50 students in the first-year classes. Chinese and Japanese probably have in the 50s each. In Russian, we are at the bottom of the heap. In the 1970s and ’80s, during the Cold War, there were 55 or 60 students in the elementary classes. Now there are 15 or 16.”
Sara Faith Alterman can be reached, in English, at salterman@phx.com.
