<< In a nation of mono-linguists (myself included I must admit) Rice's ability to speak four languages, with whatever degree of facility, is not the worst thing about her. >>
Why, when this very adminstration is pushing punitive measures against public school children who don't "meet the highest standards" (in my 9-year-old's case, using textbooks published in 1982), should we give Rice even faint praise? Why should we cut slack for someone who has climbed almost to the very pinnacle of academic and, now, imperial power, all the while claiming an expertise (even if a secondary one) that she apparently does not possess?
People will sometimes ask me, "Oh, so you speak Russian?" when it comes up that I studied the language as an undergraduate. I reply, truthfully, no: I have not spoken it at the level necessary to sustain anything approaching practicality, let alone mastery, for about 20 years. I would consider it an embarrassing falsehood to claim otherwise. Yet based on Chris and Wojtek's description I could muddle through in a pidgin-Russian similar to Rice's.
I don't begrudge Rice her pidgin-Russian. It is totally irrelevant to the true skills (flattering the powerful, duplicity, justifying war crimes, etc.) for which she is rewarded. But let's not do the equivalent of praising someone's mathematics "scholarship" because he can compute a tip without a calculator.
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 18:42:41 +0000
>>From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
>>
>>Chris:
>> > I saw her on Russian TV when she was here a while ago.
>> > She speaks Russian abominably badly. "Uh, ya, uh,
>> > ochen rada, uh" (wait think, what's the verb "to be"
>> > in Russian, "b"-something, oh I remember!) "byt'
>> > zdes'!" You'd think someone supposedly an expert on
>> > Russia would be able to speak at higher than a
>> > first-grade level.
>>
>>That is not even idiomatic Russian, but a word-for-word translation of the
>>English phrase. Would you think that a person of average intelligence and
>>sensitivity would memorize a few stock phrases like that is she wanted to
>>impress her hosts? Even is she does not speak Russian, somebody on her
>>staff most likely does, and even if it does not, it is not that difficult
>>to
>>find someone who does. That tells you something about the mind set of US
>>policy makers.
>
>[But let's not forget it's *what* Rice says not *how* she says it that's the
>problem. In a nation of mono-linguists (myself included I must admit)
>Rice's ability to speak four languages, with whatever degree of facility, is
>not the worst thing about her. She said this about her Russian skills in an
>interview:]
>
>#6 - JRL 7062
>Gazeta
>February 14, 2003
>CONDOLEEZZA RICE: ALL WE NEED IS DETERMINATION
>Russia and the United States: dealing with challenges together
>Author: Andrei Shchitov
>
>... Question: Everyone knows in Russia that you specialized in our country.
>How is your Russian?
>
>Condoleezza Rice (in Russian): I speak Russian less and less frequently... I
>read a lot. Sometimes, I speak Russian with whoever speaks the language
>here. And of course, I speak Russian whenever I go to Russia.
>
><http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7062-6.cfm>
>
>Carl
>
>
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