Mandarin Blue : Language at Cold War

This is not a book review because "Mandarin Blue, RAF Chinese Linguists in the Cold War" has seemingly yet to be released although some reviewer got hold of early copies. A few years ago, some books were released about the US Army special crash course in Japanese language set up during the early years of WWII to try and counter the fact that almost no single US citizen was able to speak and understand the language of the enemy. The books I have somewhere piled up were not very much informative.

Mandarin Blue looks enticing, all the more after you read this article over the BBC, and this 30 minutes radio broadcast which is immensely informative and deliciously British.

These young people going to the army were saved of the barracks and lured into learning Chinese to end up in Hong Kong listening to Chinese broadcast. There are powerful hints in the audio piece at how learning a language is first and all learning to listen, which the starting point and condition of being able to interpret.

The strategic value of knowing the language, of your past enemy or partner, ever sounds as passé, when listening to the audio. Now is the good current days of learning Mandarin for the economic value of it, as it was for Japanese 30 years ago. Other wars are having language competency put at the front of strategy, although still hidden until books are written 60 + odd years after the conflict is over.

Now, how they did it without the Internet and the noise? I hope the book answers a little bit on this - the books on the equivalent story with Japanese didn't - so that I can grab some stuff and make it use in my own courses, war or not.