Critical Languages for the United States

What is most problematic about defining critical languages for any government or nation is the range of stakeholders involved—academic, governmental, private sector, and others. This entry focuses on how the U.S. government has set standards for what its various components consider to be the most critical language needs for the near future until 2015.

The existence of a common priority list across federal agencies is doubtful; indeed, the terminology used for such priorities varies from unit to unit. For the Department of State, a single list of “critical languages” has been promulgated on the department Web site. In contrast, the Department of Defense has developed (for official use only; i.e., not for publication) a bipartite “Strategic Language List” this is divided between “Immediate Investment Languages,” for which there is a requirement for substantial organic capability projected through 2015, and “Stronghold Languages,” which require in-house capability to be developed and/or identified. No rank ordering is being given because, again, there is no consensus-based ranking of language needs across the various federal agencies. As the experience of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has made clear, priorities shift by the decade and, indeed, sometimes even by the year or month.

Within these limitations, the following is a reasonably reliable list of critical languages for the United States in the 21st century, in alphabetical order:

• 1.
  Arabic—including Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and regional dialects
• 2.
  Chinese—including Mandarin, Gan, Cantonese, and Wu (Shanghai)
• 3.
  Indie—including at least, but not necessarily limited to, Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu
• 4.
  Korean
• 5.
  Persian—including at least, but not necessarily limited to, Dari/Afghan, Farsi/Iranian, Kurdish, Pashto, and Tajiki
• 6.
  Russian
• 7.
  Turkic—including at least, but not necessarily limited to, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Turkish, Turkmen, and Uzbek

Although the initial impression is that the focus of this critical languages listing is largely within the realm of the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs), many federal organizations also place a high value on the development of language and cultural communicative skills in the more commonly taught languages for their personnel. The Department of Defense includes French, Portuguese, and Spanish among its “immediate investment languages,” perhaps more a recognition of the ongoing strategic value of these languages than the more short-term tactical importance of many of the LCTLs, particularly within the former Soviet republics and the Muslim sphere of influence.

In an attempt to more broadly provide support the development of a national capacity for the critical languages in particular, a major announcement was made on January 5, 2006. On that date, President George W Bush addressed a conference of approximately 50 American university presidents to announce the introduction of the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI). NSLI is unprecedented in American history in that it is a joint project of four major federal agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, the Department of State, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The initiative has three major goals: (a) expanding the number of Americans mastering critical-need languages, beginning study at an earlier age; (b) increasing the number of advanced-level speakers of foreign languages, in particular those classified as critical need; and (c) increasing the number of foreign-language teachers and necessary resources.

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