ast November, I had a fascinating lunch conversation with a family friend who was leaving home to join the U.S. Army to become a language analyst. As some of you know, the U.S. military maintains a language center in Monterey, CA, where recruits are trained to become linguists and communications experts to analyze foreign message transmissions in American listening posts around the world.

I assumed that, being already bilingual, his language assignment/specialty would be obvious.

Wrong.

Here’s the interesting part: the Army doesn’t much care if you are already fluently multilingual. Whether you’re an Appalachian-born paleskin from West Virginia, or an internationally-schooled student with an accentless command of multiple languages, every recruit is given a very strange screening test.

As my friend told me, the screening test is largely comprised of symbols-based multiple-choice questions … with most of the questions revolving around geometric shapes and lines. Typical question would have a pattern of lines and polygons on the left, and four others to its right with the question: ‘the pattern on the left most resembles: pattern A, pattern B, pattern C, or pattern D.’

These bizarre questions would go on for PAGES and PAGES, and take hours to complete.

At the end of the test, the Army will score your responses and say, “Lieutenant Smith, your language placement test indicates that you think in Russian. You will report to Russian Linguistics Orientation at oh-eight-hundred hour on Monday.”

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