I'm a non-CTI and passed the Spanish DLPT. However, I was told I will not receive bonus pay because Spanish is considered Dominant in Force.

Do CTIs get FLPB for DIF languages like Spanish, even if they are say an Arabic linguist?

If so, how would an Arabic linguist ever use his Spanish skills?

And why would a CTI warrant bonus pay (and a non-CTI like myself wouldn't) for a Dominant in the Fleet language even when they aren't in a billet to use that language and he/she didn't learn it at DLI?

CTIs can receive language pay for any language that there's a DLPT for. I don't know what the logic is to this, but I can tell you why they don't let everyone in the fleet get language pay for things like Spanish. It would cost too much and there's not a need to have thousands of Spanish speakers, so why should the government pay for it? I know someone who studied French and Italian in college and then joined the Navy as a CTI, went to DLI and learned Arabic and now gets $1000 language pay every month. In my opinion only languages that are needed by the Navy should be eligible for FLPP, whether you're a CTI or not.

I'm pretty sure the Army does it differently. Even their linguists can only get paid for languages that are considered to be needed or rare. Also, as an Arabic linguist in the Navy and the Air Force you can get paid for the Arabic dialects (Levantine, Iraqi, and Egyptian) if you pass the DLPT for them, but the Army will not pay its people for the Arabic dialects whether they pass the DLPT in them or not. I'm not sure about the Marines. Right now I get FLPP for MSA (what they teach at DLI) and Levantine (dialect spoken in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria). I tried the Egyptian DLPT, but I didn't study as much as I should have and only got a 1+. You need a 2 to get paid for the language. I know people who have passed the MSA DLPT and all the dialects and have maxed out their FLPP pay just from Arabic and its dialects. Farsi and Dari are also very similar to each other and you can get paid for each of those separately. I understand why they allow you to get paid for Arabic dialects though. They're pretty distant from what is taught at DLI. Someone going straight from DLI to Iraq is unlikely to understand much of anything being said. In fact right I've heard the military is looking at whether the Arabic dialects should be taught instead of MSA.

Saxquiz....interesting comments. Yeah, its only been in the last couple of years that I really got exposed to Arabic, and on the Air Force side there is a growing realization that oh, gee, nobody acutally SPEAKS MSA and we need to fix DLI.

I agree with you that only languages needed by DoD should be eligible for FLPP, but if I had to guess I bet the current policy is really more of a retention tool to keep CTIs from jumping ship by paying them off rather than trying to meet a serious operational need for French and Italian linguists.

Yeah, MSA is great for reading the newspaper and listening to Al Jazeera, but if you're trying to listen to suspected terrorists talking amongst themselves there's no way in hell you're going to be able to understand what they're saying with formal MSA training. In reality learning MSA does make it easier to learn the dialects, but if you need to know Iraqi ASAP the best way to do that is to take a class in Iraqi, not to take a class for MSA and then take a class for Iraqi. If you need to know all the dialects then the best way would be to learn MSA first.