<p>I hear the linguistics program at Macalester is very limited and weak. Anyone care to confirm or deny?</p>
<p>I heard they will start an Arabic program soon. From my sense of it, they have a firm linguistics program, but few languages to select from.</p>
<p>I believe linguistics is a fairly small department, but my friends who are doing it like it. The only thing is that it's taught, at least at the intro level, with more of an emphasis on English as a base, which international students can find frustrating because English isn't their first language.
Languages are taught in the area studies departments. They're aiming to have a Middle Eastern Studies department going by fall of 2007. You can currently take Arabic at a college a mile down the road from Mac. People will sometimes take languages elsewhere, but the school has quite a few choices. There's Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, ancient Greek, Latin, and ancient Hebrew.</p>