Language Difficulty Ranking
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has created a list to show the approximate time you need to learn a specific language as an English speaker.
Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
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Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.co ... difficulty
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- White Belt
- Posts: 42
- Joined: Wed Aug 19, 2020 12:31 am
- Languages: English (N), Spanish (A1), German (A1), Italian (A1), Croatian (Beginner)
- Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=15851
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Re: Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
Personally, I've never agreed with those rankings. I know that English has a lot of shared words with French but the pronunciation and grammar differences make it much more difficult than Spanish or even German, IMO. I dabbled in French for a while and never got very far at all.
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Spanish
: ModernStates
: Forge
: Busuu
Croatian
: Teach Yourself
: Mondly
German
: Assimil
: Lingodeer
: ModernStates
: Forge
: Busuu
Croatian
: Teach Yourself
: Mondly
German
: Assimil
: Lingodeer
- jonm
- Orange Belt
- Posts: 202
- Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:06 pm
- Location: Massachusetts, USA
- Languages: English (N)
Spanish (adv.)
Bangla (int.)
French (passive) - Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9402
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- White Belt
- Posts: 13
- Joined: Sat Sep 07, 2019 1:01 pm
- Languages: English (N), Spanish (fluent), French (intermediate), Levantine Arabic (beginner)
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Re: Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
annelions wrote:Personally, I've never agreed with those rankings. I know that English has a lot of shared words with French but the pronunciation and grammar differences make it much more difficult than Spanish or even German, IMO. I dabbled in French for a while and never got very far at all.
I think it's just so individual. I (as an English speaker) struggled a ton with German compared to French, but I have known a couple of English speakers who just couldn't wrap their heads around Spanish but picked up German pretty quickly. It's probably a combination of talents (for example, I'm better at pronunciation but worse at vocabulary), learning style, interests, motivation, and background. I do think that the rankings are probably close to correct on a very broad scale, though (like clearly Norwegian will be easier than Japanese for an English speaker).
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- White Belt
- Posts: 46
- Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 10:14 pm
- Languages: English (N), Thai (A0)
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Re: Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
annelions wrote:Personally, I've never agreed with those rankings. I know that English has a lot of shared words with French but the pronunciation and grammar differences make it much more difficult than Spanish or even German, IMO. I dabbled in French for a while and never got very far at all.
The original post was written in 2015 and there have been a few adjustments since. There are now just four categories. FSI's French course is now 30 weeks/750 hours compared to 24 weeks/600 hours for other Category I courses. German is Category II along with Haitian Creole, Swahili, Indonesian, and Malay (36 weeks/900 hours.)
https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/
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- SCMT
- Orange Belt
- Posts: 245
- Joined: Thu May 30, 2019 6:32 pm
- Languages: Engilsh (N)
Spanish (Learning)
French (Beginning) - Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10551
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Re: Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
ASEAN wrote:annelions wrote:Personally, I've never agreed with those rankings. I know that English has a lot of shared words with French but the pronunciation and grammar differences make it much more difficult than Spanish or even German, IMO. I dabbled in French for a while and never got very far at all.
The original post was written in 2015 and there have been a few adjustments since. There are now just four categories. FSI's French course is now 30 weeks/750 hours compared to 24 weeks/600 hours for other Category I courses. German is Category II along with Haitian Creole, Swahili, Indonesian, and Malay (36 weeks/900 hours.)
https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/
Wait...so French got harder?
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- White Belt
- Posts: 42
- Joined: Wed Aug 19, 2020 12:31 am
- Languages: English (N), Spanish (A1), German (A1), Italian (A1), Croatian (Beginner)
- Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=15851
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Re: Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
SCMT wrote:Wait...so French got harder?
Good! French actually turned me off of language learning for a while. Everyone (at the time) was saying how easy French is because of things like shared vocabulary. I was bored with Spanish in school and wanted to learn something more interesting. French was not easy! I dabbled and continued to buy language books since then but French really put me off of any serious language studies. If I couldn't deal with an "easy" language like French, how was I supposed to learn a "difficult" one like German?
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Spanish
: ModernStates
: Forge
: Busuu
Croatian
: Teach Yourself
: Mondly
German
: Assimil
: Lingodeer
: ModernStates
: Forge
: Busuu
Croatian
: Teach Yourself
: Mondly
German
: Assimil
: Lingodeer
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- White Belt
- Posts: 26
- Joined: Sat Aug 01, 2020 12:23 pm
- Languages: English (C), Russian (C), Chinese (B), German (A), plus bits and pieces of a few other languages.
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Re: Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
This ranking is, obviously, most relevant for monolingual English speakers. The moment you come from a different language background or, god forbid, don't speak English at all and/or know a few other languages, it becomes a hit and miss. But nevertheless, I have always liked this ranking - I love quantifying things.
But I've always wondered - are those, say, 600 hours academic hours or not? Are they class hours only, or include homework and/or independent practice?
But I've always wondered - are those, say, 600 hours academic hours or not? Are they class hours only, or include homework and/or independent practice?
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- thevagrant88
- Orange Belt
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- Location: USA
- Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1) Japanese (FU)
- Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =14564#top
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Re: Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
Despite some incongruous entries (Mongolian should easily be on the same level as Korean and Japanese, for example) it’s a solid guideline for native English speakers. I don’t really know how useful this is exactly but it’s still interesting. It could honestly pretty easily be further stratified, but still.
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- Gordafarin2
- Orange Belt
- Posts: 161
- Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2018 10:53 am
- Languages: English (N)
Current focus: Mandarin (A2), Italian (A2)
Maintaining: Persian (B2), Esperanto (B2), Spanish (rusty B1-2)
Dabbled: ASL, French - Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17156
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Re: Language Difficulty Ranking (FSI)
Migla wrote:But I've always wondered - are those, say, 600 hours academic hours or not? Are they class hours only, or include homework and/or independent practice?
That's a good question! I found a page mentioning "Their [FSI's] schedule calls for 25 hours of class per week with three or four hours per day of directed self-study." The hour-week equivalences account for the 25 class hours - so my interpretation is the 600 hours doesn't include extra homework/review time.
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Persian... 10 novels:
Mandarin...
4000 words: / 2000 characters:
she/her
Mandarin...
4000 words: / 2000 characters:
she/her
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