Language Difficulty

Open Forum
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This excerpt from ‘Learning Expectations’ (Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers) is in reference to my recent post on the thread ‘Linguistic Relativity’ (http://tinyurl.com/y8b4ogz):

Learning Expectations

"The Foreign Service Institute of the Department (FSI) of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for a number of languages based on the length of time it takes to achieve Speaking 3: General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3) and Reading 3: General Professional Proficiency in Reading (R3). The list is limited to languages taught at the Foreign Service Institute.

It must be kept in mind that that students at FSI are almost 40 years old, are native speakers of English. and have a good aptitude for formal language study, plus knowledge of several other foreign languages. They study in small classes of no more than 6. Their schedule calls for 25 hours of class per week with 3-4 hours per day of directed self-study.

Category I: Languages closely related to English
23-24 weeks (575-600 class hours)
Afrikaans Danish
Dutch
French
Italian Norwegian
Portuguese
Romanian
Spanish
Swedish
Category II: Languages with significant linguistic
and/or cultural differences from English
44 weeks (1100 class hours)
Albanian
Amharic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Burmese
Croatian
Czech
*Estonian
*Finnish
*Georgian
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
*Hungarian
Icelandic
Khmer
Lao
Latvian Lithuanian
Macedonian
*Mongolian
Nepali
Pashto
Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik)
Polish
Russian
Serbian
Sinhalese
Slovak
Slovenian
Tagalog
*Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
*Vietnamese
Xhosa
Zulu
Category III: Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
88 weeks (second year of study in-country)
(2200 class hours)
Arabic
Cantonese
Mandarin
*Japanese
Korean
Other languages
German 30 weeks (750 class hours)
Indonesian, Malaysian, Swahili 36 weeks (900 class hours)

  • Languages preceded by asterisks are typically somewhat more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category.

Duration of language instruction in US colleges and universities
Compare these figures to the average number of class hours per year in a college language course. A typical college year is 9 months, or 36 weeks. A typical language course is 3-5 hours a week, or 108-180 hours per year plus preparation outside of class. It’s no wonder that students who start a foreign language from scratch in college, rarely achieve higher levels of proficiency. Unless they have done significant language work in high school, they will need to supplement their college program with intensive summer schools and study abroad in order to achieve a high level of proficiency.

The inevitable conclusion is that one must begin the study of a foreign language as early as possible and pursue it for many years in order to achieve higher levels of proficiency."

Or unless they learn more efficiently and effectively using LingQ!

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It is neither expensive nor difficult to put in 700 hours a year of language learning in LingQ. That compares very well to any university course :wink:

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My thoughts exactly!

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The FSI has put various languages into groups according to level of difficulty for native anglophones. While I agree with the vast majority of its choices, I do wonder about Icelandic. While it a conservative language that has chosen not to adopt Latin and Greek prefixes, suffixes and roots, it is nevertheless a Germanic language. So, in my opinion, Icelandic would be easier to learn than, let say, Finnish, which are both listed in the second category. After all, Icelandic is an Indo-European language while Finnish is not. Dominic Rossi (Rick)

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