Where would some minority languages place on the FSI language list?

[Dtmont]

I am curious if anyone here has a guess as to where lesser spoken languages (or even largely spoken languages that somehow aren't on the list) would rank on the FSI language list. European Languages like Sorbian,Galician,Rusyn,Asturian,Occidental,Romansh,Asian languages like Balinese and Javanese and Creoles and Pidgins spoken throughout the world (and don't get me started about languages of the African continent). Anyone like to take a guess? Go ahead and just pick one or two and explain where you would place it and why.

[Speakeasy]

This is an interesting question, it could be applied to the estimated 6,900 languages which are currently spoken throughout the world. In order to extend the “FSI Language Difficulty Rating” to the list of languages that you provided, or to any other language, (a) one would need to compare them to English according to a set of agreed-upon criteria, and (b) one would have to have a very good idea of the fundamental characteristics which define English as well as those which define the languages to be evaluated. Otherwise, assigning additional languages to the FSI list becomes nothing more than an amusing parlour game.

Some years ago, I came across the “short list” of criteria which the FSI staff used to developed the old (and subsequently updated) FSI Language Difficulty Rating. Although my quick Google search has not revealed it, I’m pretty sure that it’s out there, somewhere. While having access to the criteria would be a "start” in this exercise, applying them would still require a level of expertise that many of us do not possess. Certainly, this leaves me out, I wouldn’t even make an attempt!

EDITED:
Tinkering.

[Dtmont]

This is an interesting question, it could be applied to the estimated 6,900 languages which are currently spoken throughout the world. In order to extend the “FSI Language Difficulty Rating” to the list of languages that you provided, or to any other language, (a) one would need to compare them to English according to a set of agreed-upon criteria, and (b) one would have to have a very good idea of the fundamental characteristics which define English as well as those which define the languages to be evaluated. Otherwise, assigning additional languages to the FSI list becomes nothing more than an amusing parlour game.

Some years ago, I came across the “short list” of criteria which the FSI staff used to developed the old (and subsequently updated) FSI Language Difficulty Rating. Although my quick Google search has not revealed it, I’m pretty sure that it’s out there, somewhere. While having access to the criteria would be a "start” in this exercise, applying them would still require a level of expertise that many of us do not possess. Certainly, this leaves me out, I wouldn’t even make an attempt!

EDITED:
Tinkering.

I would love to see the criteria if someone can find it.

I would love for people to make guesses, no need to take this question too seriously.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Something like this?

Category I: 23-24 weeks (575-600 hours)
Languages closely related to English
/.../
Category II: 30 weeks (750 hours)
Languages similar to English
/.../
Category III: 36 weeks (900 hours)
Languages with linguistic and/or cultural differences from English
/.../
Category IV: 44 weeks (1100 hours)
Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English
/.../
Category V: 88 weeks (2200 hours)
Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers

( https://www.atlasandboots.com/foreign-s ... ifficulty/ )

[Speakeasy]

I would love to see the criteria if someone can find it.

I, too, would like to recover a copy of the FSI’s criteria for evaluating the relative difficulty of learning a given language from the perspective of an adult, native English speaker. I would imagine that these criteria could be universally applied in comparing any two languages.

While I am neither a specialist in the field nor an informed amateur, it seems to me that the minimum criteria for comparing two languages would include their respective: (a) phonology/phonetics/pronunciation and tonalities; that is, is one a tonal language whereas the other is not, (b) grammar and other structural features, (c) similarities or differences in vocabulary and the presence or not of cognates, and (d) writing systems.

There are probably other features which are used to characterize a language. With a bit of luck, either someone will dig up a copy of the FSI’s criteria or a trained linguist or other specialist will set us on the straight-and-narrow path.

… no need to take this question too seriously

Regrettably (for me), this is not part of my genetic make-up.

[Speakeasy]

Something like this? ...

Close, but no cigar*. In my view, these tables represent the classification of a number of languages following in-depth analyses against the FSI's criteria, not the criteria themselves.

*Close, but no cigar
I learned this typically American idiom as a boy, from the neighbourhood kids, somewhere around 6 years of age. Obviously, I'm paraphrasing here, but their explication was that, in a contest, a small prize such as a cigar might be offered to the winning contestant. Someone who’s performance in the competition was almost, but not quite, sufficient to winning the coveted cigar -- for example, someone who finished in second place and who was therefore not eligible to collect the prize -- would be told: “close, but no cigar.” I would imagine that these contests, and the custom of awarding a cigar (a prize of nominal value), took place in the 19th century United States. Considering that the young boys who taught me this expression were of my own age and, like myself, were growing up on a Canadian Army base, this little anecdote serves as a fine example of how language is seamlessly transmitted throughout society. Sorry, what were we talking about?

EDITED:
Close, but no cigar (Speakeasy's childhood memories)

[malach]

There's this paper: http://www.sealang.net/archives/sla/gurt_1999_07.pdf (which I probably bookmarked earlier from this forum)

"This paper is about the interface among theory, practice, purpose, and result during the fifty years of existence of the Foreign Service Institute(FSI), and the lessons that have been learned from that interface. We will present our view of what has been learned from FSI’s half century of practical experience preparing thousands of adult learners to carry out complex, professional tasks in foreign languages. The core of the paper will be ten pragmatic lessons about adult language learning and instruction at FSI"

Their Table 2 gives three categories of languages. They state: "Two things need to be understood about these categories. First, they are based solely on FSI’s experience of the time it takes our learners to learn these languages."

So this paper's criteria for the categories are observations of their students. But then there is some analysis of language similarity, trying to explain the categories.

[iguanamon]

I am curious if anyone here has a guess as to where lesser spoken languages (or even largely spoken languages that somehow aren't on the list) would rank on the FSI language list. European Languages like Sorbian,Galician,Rusyn,Asturian,Occidental,Romansh,Asian languages like Balinese and Javanese and Creoles and Pidgins spoken throughout the world (and don't get me started about languages of the African continent). Anyone like to take a guess? Go ahead and just pick one or two and explain where you would place it and why.

I've learned Creoles and minority languages. Part of the difficulty in learning a minority language or a "less commonly learned language" is that they have fewer resources available to learn them than larger, more popular languages have. Let's take Djudeo-espanyol/Ladino. It's very close to Spanish, but with some big differences. It's those big differences that make it a language in its own right. I have always contended that a learner can not learn the language easily without a high level in Spanish. Having a High level in Portuguese, French or Italian would also be helpful. Why is this?... because there are so few resources available to take a learner without a high level in Romance languages from zero to intermediate. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it would be an extremely daunting task. The spelling differences, vocabulary differences, and grammar differences from varieties spoken (historically) in Istanbul, Izmir, Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria can be large. Sometimes a Turkish derived word will be used and sometimes a Spanish/Portuguese/Italian/French/Arabic derived word. Still, the actual language itself isn't that much more difficult than learning Spanish or Portuguese... but it can't be approached that way by a beginner who doesn't have a high level in Spanish or Portuguese. So I would give it a category 1 but for the writing systems. There are four- Latin script and three Hebrew scripts- Rashi, Solitreo and Meruba. If a Ladino-learner can't learn how to read in these Hebrew scripts, a large portion of the literature, and culture, is inaccessible to them. So, given the quirks and the writing systems, I would place it as a Category 2 language.

Haitian Creole has few resources available but the ones that do exist are of high quality and can take a learner quite a long way. A French-speaker (native or L2) will have a definite advantage since HC is a French lexified creole. So definitely a category 1 language- there's no gender (well, just a very tiny bit) and no conjugation of verbs (particles are used for tenses). There are also many books printed in HC.

Lesser Antilles French Creole (St Lucia; Dominica; Trinidad; Venezuela; Brazil) is a different kettle of fish. Martinique and Guadeloupe Creoles have much more direct contact with French itself and have some different vocabulary that won't be found on the ostensibly English-speaking islands of St Lucia and Dominica. To a large extent, for native-speakers, LAFC is mutually comprehensible with Haitian Creole. As a learner with no language-learning background it would be very difficult to reach a high level because there are so few resources available. Again, it's not a hard language to learn. It's just hard to get enough resources tailored to raw beginners with no language-learning experience. Unlike Haitian Creole, there are just very, very few books printed in the language. If sufficient resources were available it would be a Category 1 language, but given the difficulties in finding high quality resources, I'd say that it would make it more like a Category 2 language to learn for a monolingual English-speaker. I learned what I could from books but most of what I learned came from conversation with native-speakers.

So I would say it is the lack of good quality, easily accessible, learning materials geared toward a monolingual English-speaking audience, and the lack of TL books and series, that make learning these languages so much more difficult for English-speakers. It isn't that the languages themselves are particularly difficult. I would hazard to guess that pidgin learners would encounter much the same. To really get to a high level would be hard to do unless one had access to native-speakers, given the limitations. When learning, say French, Spanish, Italian or Dutch there are a plethora of resources available, both learner intended and non-learner intended.

[Earth]

FSI's estimates are for their students in their programs, so it doesn't matter how many speakers a language has, or how much media is available in the language. They could teach smaller or minority languages just as well as they do bigger languages.

I have experience with several smaller European languages or minority languages, namely Catalan, Aragonese, Galician, and Occitan. These are all western Romance languages with grammars, lexicons, orthographies, and pragmatics that are extremely similar to other western Romance languages like Spanish, Portuguese, and French. I see no reason why these would be in any other category than category I, like most of the Romance and Germanic languages that FSI teaches.

It's a different matter for people learning them on their own due to scarce resources explaining the particularities of these languages, along with much less media being available for consumption.