I love reading lists of languages. If you know how to do it, with a little background info, you can tell a lot about an organization. A couple of years ago, the FBI put out a list of languages it was looking for info about. All of them seemed reasonable enough, but they also wanted to know about Broome Pearl Lugging Pidgin, an English-Japanese-aboriginal language pidgin spoken by pearl divers on the west coast of Australia, sprang up in the early 20th century, but had no living speakers. I made some inquiries, but was never able to figure out what the FBI wanted with it. Maybe some FBI guy was about to retire and write a novel and needed info about the pidgin. (If you know, drop me a line.)

Well, the Arizona State University Critical Languages Institute is offering intensive language courses in Albanian (ok, makes sense), Armenian (ok), Bosnian (sure), Macedonian (ok, probably on the Pentagon's list), Polish (ok), Russian (ok), Tatar (ok), Uzbek (ok, on the Pentagon's list), and Navajo (huh?). Maybe it's because they have Navajo instructors and demand for the class...or maybe there really is a critical need for Navajo in Arizona.