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Foreign language bonuses open to all airmen

Bolehkah anda bercakap Bahasa Melayu? ¿Hablas español? Khun phûut phaasãa thai ben mãi?

If you know — or want to learn — Malay, Spanish, Thai or one of more than 100 other foreign languages, the Air Force has some cash to throw your way.

The service is offering its foreign language proficiency bonus to all airmen, not just those in jobs that require them to speak a foreign language.

“Before, you had to be in a position that required you to use that language skill,” said Lt. Col. Paul Valenzuela, chief of the Air Force’s language and culture program office, which oversees the bonus program.

“Now if you have a language that is on our list at a [particular] skill level, then you’re eligible for the bonus,” he said. “It really opens the aperture of eligible airmen for the bonus.”

The monthly amount depends on the language and an airman’s aptitude, but top dollar is $1,000 for anyone proficient in two foreign languages.

Right now, about 4,300 airmen receive the language bonus — most of them get about $500 a month, Valenzuela said. He expects as many as 13,000 more could be eligible, based on the number who have qualified in the past.

To qualify, an airman has to take the Defense Language Proficiency Test, which is administered by his base education office. The test is divided into listening, reading and speaking, and the airman must pass two of the categories. If the airman demonstrates proficiency, the base education office then initiates the bonus payments, Valenzuela said.

Airmen must pass the test every year to keep receiving the bonus, he said.

Many of the airmen receiving the bonus know French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish; more, however, are speaking Chinese, Arabic and Pashto, Valenzuela said.

Airmen who don’t speak a foreign language have ways to learn one, he said. New officers can volunteer for language training through the Language Enabled Airman Program, and the Air Force Culture and Language Center at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., provides all levels of training.

The Air Force is also offering a new $3,000-a-year bonus for its ROTC cadets who take language courses or who study abroad to improve their language skills, Valenzuela said. About 1,100 cadets are expected to participate in the coming fall semester, he said.

“This is big bonus bucks for languages and there are airmen out there right now cashing in on the bonus, and we certainly want everyone to be aware of it and to take advantage of it,” Valenzuela said.

The bonus programs, though, are about more than just money, he said.

“We’re talking about the human aspect of the mission,” Valenzuela said. “In order to be successful at the human aspect, being able to understand the culture and speak the language is vital.”

SPEAKING OF CASH

Airmen can draw monthly bonuses of about $500 for speaking a foreign language in the following three categories.

Critical languages

Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic, Algerian, Egyptian, Gulf, Iraqi, and Levantine dialects only.

Chinese: Mandarin, Cantonese, Gan and Wu only.

French*

Languages of India: Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam and Kanarese only.

Languages of Indonesia: Indonesian and Javanese only.

Japanese

Korean

Pashto (Pushtu): includes Pashto-Afghan

Persian: Afghan (Dari) and Iranian (Farsi) dialects only.

Portuguese: includes Continental (European) and Brazilian.

Russian*

Spanish*

Turkic languages: Turkish and Turkmen only.

Urdu

Languages needed for crises, potential threats

Bengali

Cambodian

Czech

Georgian

Hebrew

Languages of Africa: Hausa, Igbo, Somali, Swahili and Yoruba only.

Kurdi (Kurdish): Kurmanji and Sorani only.

Malay

Serbo-Croatian

Languages of the Philippines: Cebuano, Chavacano, Ilocano, Maguindanao, Tagalog* and Tausug (Moro) only.

Thai

Turkic languages: Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Uzbek only.

Vietnamese

Other languages

Afrikaans

Albanian

Amharic

Armenian

Assyrian

Baluchi

Belorussian

Berber       

Bulgarian

Burmese

Chechen

Danish

Dutch

Estonian

Finnish

Flemish

German*

Greek

Gujarati

Haitian-Creole

Hiligaynon

Hungarian

Icelandic

Italian*

Kashmiri

Kikongo

Kirghiz

Lao

Latvian

Lithuanian

Luganda

Macedonian

Mandintio-Bambara

Marathi

Mongolian

Nepalese

Norwegian

Polish

Quechaua

Romanian

Sindhi

Singhalese

Slovak

Slovenian

Swedish

Tadjik (Tajik)

Tigrinya

Uighur

Ukrainian

Wolof

Zulu-Zul

*Languages considered dominant by foreign language proficiency bonus program.