My fiance is going to be working for a base newspaper (shit, post! They call it the post! I am never going to get this right!) although he has never been in the army and in fact grew up as a Navy brat. He’s going to need to learn the lingo, the customs, the etiquette, etc. Where should he start?
Are there books on the subject? Good websites? I suppose we get to watch a bunch of war movies? But only Army ones as one wouldn’t want to get one’s Oo-rahs mixed up with one’s Hoo-ahs, right? I’m pretty sure the latter is what Al Pacino calls a lady of the evening.
And what exactly should he be brushing up on? I’d think it would be fairly important in addition to common jargon for him to learn to identify uniforms and rank, but what else? Everybody he’ll be working with is either an old hand at this or a DoD employee, so he wants to be careful not to make any obvious rookie mistakes but there’s probably a lot of background knowledge they just take for granted.
I disagree. I have spent 23 of my 44 years in the military, both full time and part time. What happens while cadets are in college is insignificant to how the real army is. The good officers are cured of that crap real soon. The bad ones don’t last long.
I don’t thik civilians are expected to know about military etiquette and lingo. If someone uses a word he doesn’t know, he can just ask what it means. Trying to learn lingo beforehand theoretically can lead to misuse which would backfire and be worse than just not knowing the word at all. Ostensibly trying to be part of the group when you’re ostensibly not part of it is usually counterproductive.
If he wants to learn the customs, observing them and then asking soldiers around him to explain said customs is a great way to get a conversation going.
The only reason he should learn the ranks is to know who’s the decision maker in a group and to be able to name people properly when talking about them in the third person.
I don’t know how hard up the US army is but it’d take a special kind of person to hold it against a civilian not to have talked or behaved like a soldier.
Are you referring to the hazing? If so, I agree. I come from a long line of West Pointers though, and I would say that it changes how they do everything they do.
My cousin, who graduted 2003ish would tell you that the hazing is largely gone though.
If that’s not what you mean, could you be more specific? Would no one say “Go spin the spurs” if you were concerned about the outcome of an inspection?
That’s the sort of thing that will be important - he’ll be writing articles about and for these people, and it’s a big deal to get it right. (I mean, that “post” thing for example. I’ve lived less than a mile from the place my whole life and never called it anything but “the base” or “the fort”, but evidently they call it “the post”.)
This kind of strikes me like those kids who took Kaplan’s “Intro to Law School” thing the summer before they started law school … those who did just came across as ultra-tools.
Look, everybody saw your fiance’s resume before they offered him the job. They already know he hasn’t been in the service. If he comes in hoping to fool them and Ooh-rah’ing and talking about MOSes and all that, they’re just going to roll their eyes at him like an ultra-tool. Kind of like I do when a paralegal uses the word “instanter” as if it were something that anybody ever says outside of a caption page.
He’ll have an editor, so his grossest mistakes will be caught. While he is to be commended for his enthusiasm, becoming an old pro is a time-consuming process—it can’t be rushed. So he should just try to do the best job he can and keep his eyes and ears open. This, it occurs to me, is the answer to your question in your OP: What is the best way to pick up military jargon?
Well, of course he’s going to do that, he’s a newspaper guy and that’s what he does. I just thought there might also be a good guide to jargon available.
I’m going to mostly agree with those who’ve said to watch, learn and be open when he has questions with one minor caveat. Get back issues of the paper he’ll be working for and read.
That has the advantage of giving him some starter questions (I was reading this article and I didn’t understand…) and of giving him post specific information. Even among the military there are regionalities that matter. It also makes him look like a proactive employee. Not a bad thing when starting a new job.
In the same way that your college differed from your job. One supposedly gave you the tools to do the other but they are not the same.
I’m sure it does change everything they do. But they are a small part of the army. The army culture is shaped by the NCOs and and enlisted. And I have never heard the term “go spin the spurs” until you just wrote it. I have earned my spurs as a tanker. Traditionally we wear Prince of Wales type spurs. There is no spinning.
Its important to get it right when just speaking to someone. Like calling a Command Sergeant Major “Sarge” is a bad bad thing. But the rank structure is not that difficult to pick up. Navy enlisted ranks are screwed up. What they are called changes depending on their specialty. Army ranks are simple.
What base? The culture of the base changes greatly depending on the mission. The Fort Bragg culture is much different than the culture of a training base.
But I have to tell you that many seem outdated or not very widely used. There are some on that list I have never heard of. But usually you can figure it out by context. The hardest is all the acronyms. You can compose entire sentences just using Army acronyms. Most are official designations. Its impossible to figure them out, you just have to ask. Some of them make sense after a while but most don’t. A friend of mine is currently in Afghanistan on a training mission. His team is an Operational Mentor and Liaison team (OMLT). Yes its pronounced “omelet”. A tasty breakfast but not how I would choose to go into combat.
And yes, the acronyms… I once had to go find something on base (post!) to deliver a DVD from my ex’s company - made the enormous mistake of asking directions at the gate. I don’t think there was a single word in them. I kept driving until I saw somebody not in a uniform and asked again.
This is good advice. My job is to train soldiers and officers on how to speak to the media, and they need the practice in not using “alphabet soup” when they speak. My advice is - learn the ranks, always remember to get everyone’s first name (you would be surprised how often they forget) and just go with it. He’ll start to pick up on stuff pretty quick. I have some “cheat” sheets I produced for my student journalist embeds, if you are interested I can send.