Icelandic and Romanian - Are FSI difficulty assessments ever wrong?

[David1917]

Personally I wouldn't put Chinese above Russian, for example.

The rankings are for both spoken and written language. You don't think the entire non-alphabet written language wouldn't add a lot of complexity to a language? Cyrillic may not be Roman, but it's still an alphabet.

Or am I completely off base?

I'd say it counteracts by having an immensely simplified grammar system. So the hours Russian students spend drilling cases and aspect, Chinese students would spend on radicals and extensive reading. I'd put it in Cat IV, leaving Arabic Japanese and Korean Cat V (if I'm not mistaken, Cat V is a newer one right? They used to all be in IV together?) As I understand it, Japanese and Korean have very complicated grammar systems, as well as Japanese having 3 writing systems and Korean 1-2.

[fcoulter]

Personally I wouldn't put Chinese above Russian, for example.

The rankings are for both spoken and written language. You don't think the entire non-alphabet written language wouldn't add a lot of complexity to a language? Cyrillic may not be Roman, but it's still an alphabet.

Or am I completely off base?

I'd say it counteracts by having an immensely simplified grammar system. So the hours Russian students spend drilling cases and aspect, Chinese students would spend on radicals and extensive reading. I'd put it in Cat IV, leaving Arabic Japanese and Korean Cat V (if I'm not mistaken, Cat V is a newer one right? They used to all be in IV together?) As I understand it, Japanese and Korean have very complicated grammar systems, as well as Japanese having 3 writing systems and Korean 1-2.

The number of categories depends on the source of the citation. I've seen articles in the language press with five categories, but my favorite source is the State Department, which only lists four categories. My biggest complaint about their list is that they only name three of the four categories: World, Hard, and Super-Hard. Category 2 has no name. (I suppose that's counterbalanced by Category 4 having the coolest name.)

I thought Korean only had the one writing system, which I think is the most rational writing system I've ever seen. (Probably a bitch to learn, though.) I don't know the languages, so I'll have to take you at your word on your other statements.

But my original point is that they've taught a bunch of people in those languages and have data to back up their assessments. On the other hand, my libertarian side says that I shouldn't trust anything the government says.

[David1917]

I thought Korean only had the one writing system, which I think is the most rational writing system I've ever seen.

But my original point is that they've taught a bunch of people in those languages and have data to back up their assessments. On the other hand, my libertarian side says that I shouldn't trust anything the government says.

I don't know Korean either but as far as I understand it, there is a "small" number of Chinese characters that must be learned as well.

I agree that they do have the data and experience to make reasonably sound guidelines, but yes, we should be skeptical of taking it as dogma, especially considering the source.

[Deinonysus]

I'd say it counteracts by having an immensely simplified grammar system. So the hours Russian students spend drilling cases and aspect, Chinese students would spend on radicals and extensive reading. I'd put it in Cat IV, leaving Arabic Japanese and Korean Cat V (if I'm not mistaken, Cat V is a newer one right? They used to all be in IV together?) As I understand it, Japanese and Korean have very complicated grammar systems, as well as Japanese having 3 writing systems and Korean 1-2.

Comparing the older 5-category system seen here with the current 4-category system on the official FSI website, it looks like categories 2 and 3 were merged into one category, so the old category 4 ("Hard Languages", where most languages sit) became category 3, and the old category 5 ("super-hard languages") became category 4.

I thought Korean only had the one writing system, which I think is the most rational writing system I've ever seen. (Probably a bitch to learn, though.) I don't know the languages, so I'll have to take you at your word on your other statements.

Hangul isn't a bitch to learn at all! You can get the basics down in one sitting or at most a couple of days, and it's very memorable so you won't forget it easily. Once you get past the absolute basics it does get a bit tougher with some irregular letter combinations and how to group the letters into syllables, but it didn't seem too bad.

I don't know Korean either but as far as I understand it, there is a "small" number of Chinese characters that must be learned as well.

Yes. I never got past the absolute basics in Korean, but I just took a look at a major Korean newspaper and there seem to be one or two Chinese characters in a lot of headlines. In more casual writing I would expect this to drop but I'm really not sure.

http://www.chosun.com/

[fcoulter]

I thought Korean only had the one writing system, which I think is the most rational writing system I've ever seen.

But my original point is that they've taught a bunch of people in those languages and have data to back up their assessments. On the other hand, my libertarian side says that I shouldn't trust anything the government says.

I don't know Korean either but as far as I understand it, there is a "small" number of Chinese characters that must be learned as well.

I agree that they do have the data and experience to make reasonably sound guidelines, but yes, we should be skeptical of taking it as dogma, especially considering the source.

Interesting. I didn't know that. LSNED.

[Neurotip]

My opinion as to why Icelandic may be category IV, and German not, almost entirely comes down to cases: the depth of declension in addition to breadth and the amount of irregularity

I agree. It's not a qualitative difference from German, arguably, but a huge quantitative difference in the sheer pervasiveness of the inflections and the number of variables you have to keep in your head as you speak (plus the endearing fact that the actual number of inflectional endings is rather small but they shuffle round in apparently random patterns from one paradigm to another).

I just popped into r/iceland and literally took the first sentence I saw. It begins 'Mér hefur borist þær fréttir að...' (I just heard the news that...). I know you know this, Deinonysus, but for those who don't, these words are ég 'I' +dative (the subject is in the dative here), hafa 'have' +3person-pres, bera 'bear' +past-participle +'st'-reflexive, það +fem-plural, etc. Sure, German *can* be this bad, but in Icelandic most of the words in most sentences do the kaleidoscope thing and it just adds a massive layer of extra effort in between thinking something and expressing it idiomatically.

Not that I'm bitter. Oh no, not me. I'm moving onto Greek soon anyway, where the verbs are all nice and tidy I'm told.

[Daniel N.]

Maybe it would be useful for learners of other category IV languages to contribute. I don't know much about the other category IV languages like Croatian or Russian but I suspect Icelandic's declension depth resembles those languages' more than it does German's, and maybe that's how it earned its place in category IV. It'd be interesting to compare Icelandic to other category IV languages and see if it ranks with their difficulty.

With Slavic languages, you have declension patterns for nouns and adjectives, a number of irregular nouns, more cases, more genders, but also an additional level of complexity: verb aspect. You have to learn verbs in pairs and always think which aspect I should use now (many people report it becomes natural after a couple of years).

And there are many verbs. Croatian/Serbian reportedly has roughy 13000 verbs.

[Random Review]

Interesting observations. My initial guesses are that Icelandic might "feel" older in some way, and perhaps the phonology is considered more difficult? I haven't really begun to study it yet, so I have no idea for sure. I think your guess at Romanian is probably correct with Latin loanwords being a factor to reduce difficulty, balancing with the grammar that might have bumped it to Cat II. But is it that many more than German?

But to answer the topic title, they are probably always "wrong" in the strictest sense, and in a general sense there is plenty of room for malleability in a language's difficulty. Personally I wouldn't put Chinese above Russian, for example.

Icelandic phonology is actually not bad at all. It's extremely phonetic and stress is regularly on the first syllable. It's very easy once you get past a few difficulties:

• "Voiced" consonants are not actually voiced, they are just unaspirated.
• You need to learn a couple of new sounds, such as the final L which is the same as the Welsh LL, and the soft G which is also found in Spanish, Greek, and many other languages.
• Some double consonants (tt, pp, and kk) are pre-aspirated, so takk ("thank you") is pronounced "tahk".
• Some other double consonants cause a "t" to be inserted, so gull ("gold") is pronounced like gütll (with ü as in German and ll as in Welsh), and einn ("one", masculine gender) is pronounced "eitn", but you don't really pronounce the final "n", it's more like a quick cutoff.

From this brief description, Icelandic phonology doesn't sound easy at all to me! By contrast German doesn't have a single sound that is hard to say nor a single phonemic distinction that is hard to hear. I found German pronunciation much easier even than Spanish. I would definitely expect Icelandic to be noticeably harder than German.

[Random Review]

Personally I wouldn't put Chinese above Russian, for example.

The rankings are for both spoken and written language. You don't think the entire non-alphabet written language wouldn't add a lot of complexity to a language? Cyrillic may not be Roman, but it's still an alphabet.

Or am I completely off base?

I'd say it counteracts by having an immensely simplified grammar system. So the hours Russian students spend drilling cases and aspect, Chinese students would spend on radicals and extensive reading. I'd put it in Cat IV, leaving Arabic Japanese and Korean Cat V (if I'm not mistaken, Cat V is a newer one right? They used to all be in IV together?) As I understand it, Japanese and Korean have very complicated grammar systems, as well as Japanese having 3 writing systems and Korean 1-2.

I have no opinion on Russian; but I am amazed you think Chinese grammar is simple. Endlessly fascinating for sure; but anything but simple.

Prepositional verbs, topic-comment sentences (and when you can, can't and have to use them), verbal complements (amazingly beautiful things that they are), modal particles, aspect markers, "ba" structures (and other transposed objects e.g. with "dou"), classifiers (also known as measure words)...

I am sadly still very far from proficient, but already I find the grammar a little harder than Spanish grammar and a lot harder than German. Probably easier than the famously difficult Russian, granted; but definitely harder than many.

[David1917]

I'd say it counteracts by having an immensely simplified grammar system. So the hours Russian students spend drilling cases and aspect, Chinese students would spend on radicals and extensive reading.

I have no opinion on Russian; but I am amazed you think Chinese grammar is simple. Endlessly fascinating for sure; but anything but simple.

Prepositional verbs, topic-comment sentences (and when you can, can't and have to use them), verbal complements (amazingly beautiful things that they are), modal particles, aspect markers, "ba" structures (and other transposed objects e.g. with "dou"), classifiers (also known as measure words)...

I am sadly still very far from proficient, but already I find the grammar a little harder than Spanish grammar and a lot harder than German. Probably easier than the famously difficult Russian, granted; but definitely harder than many.

I recognize that the grammar system in general is more "foreign" to an English speaker than something like German (II). But I was just proposing it be considered more along the lines of Russian (III) in terms of time commitment, rather than Arabic, Korean and Japanese (IV). All 3 of those suffer from different writing systems and minimal loanwords in addition to a complex grammar system. Since I would say Chinese does not have this last feature, it might not be placed with these and more along the lines of Russian which has a familiar writing system, a decent amount of loanwords, and a complex grammar system.