{"id":6951,"date":"2015-12-19T09:17:57","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T14:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6951"},"modified":"2015-12-19T14:14:29","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T19:14:29","slug":"comparative-language-difficulty-for-english-speakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6951","title":{"rendered":"Comparative language difficulty for English speakers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning I found a copy of the chart the Foreign Services Institute uses to grade the comparative difficulty of world languages for acquisition by an adult monoglot English speaker.<\/p>\n<p>I have an unusual perspective on this list for an American. I&#8217;m a low-grade polyglot; I have spoken three languages other than my birth English and can read a couple others with Google Translate. I have studied comparative linguistics; I know a bit about the morphology and phonology of many of these languages. I have received street-level exposure to over a dozen of them in my extensive travels, and I have a good ear.<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;m going to try to add some value to the list with additional notes and comments.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First, the list itself:<\/p>\n<table class=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th colspan=\"2\" height=\"40\">\n<strong>Category I: 23-24 weeks (575-600 hours)<\/strong><br \/>Languages closely related to English<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"46\">\nAfrikaans<br \/>\nDanish<br \/>\nDutch<br \/>\nFrench<br \/>\nItalian<\/td>\n<td width=\"54%\">\nNorwegian<br \/>\nPortuguese<br \/>\nRomanian<br \/>\nSpanish<br \/>\nSwedish<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th colspan=\"2\" height=\"40\">\n<strong>Category II: 30 weeks (750 hours)<\/strong><br \/>\nLanguages similar to English<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>German<\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th colspan=\"2\" height=\"40\">\n<strong>Category III: 36 weeks (900 hours)<\/strong><br \/>\nLanguages with linguistic and\/or cultural differences from English<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\nIndonesian<br \/>\nMalaysian<\/td>\n<td>Swahili<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th colspan=\"2\" height=\"40\">\n<strong>Category IV: 44 weeks (1100 hours)<\/strong><br \/>\nLanguages with significant linguistic and\/or cultural differences from English<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td height=\"320\">\nAlbanian<br \/>\nAmharic<br \/>\nArmenian<br \/>\nAzerbaijani<br \/>\nBengali<br \/>\nBosnian<br \/>\nBulgarian<br \/>\nBurmese<br \/>\nCroatian<br \/>\nCzech<br \/>\n*Estonian<br \/>\n*Finnish<br \/>\n*Georgian<br \/>\nGreek<br \/>\nHebrew<br \/>\nHindi<br \/>\n*Hungarian<br \/>\nIcelandic<br \/>\nKhmer<br \/>\nLao<br \/>\nLatvian<\/td>\n<td>\nLithuanian<br \/>\nMacedonian<br \/>\n*Mongolian<br \/>\nNepali<br \/>\nPashto<br \/>\nPersian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik)<br \/>\nPolish<br \/>\nRussian<br \/>\nSerbian<br \/>\nSinhala<br \/>\nSlovak<br \/>\nSlovenian<br \/>\nTagalog<br \/>\n*Thai<br \/>\nTurkish<br \/>\nUkrainian<br \/>\nUrdu<br \/>\nUzbek<br \/>\n*Vietnamese<br \/>\nXhosa<br \/>\nZulu<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th colspan=\"2\" height=\"40\">\n<strong>Category V: 88 weeks (2200 hours)<\/strong><br \/>\nLanguages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td height=\"50\">Arabic<br \/>\nCantonese (Chinese)<br \/>\nMandarin (Chinese)<\/td>\n<td>*Japanese<br \/>\nKorean<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<caption align=\"bottom\">* Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category.<\/caption>\n<\/table>\n<p>Generally I think this list is dead on target. I agree with most of it even to the level of which languages should be starred in their category.<\/p>\n<p>Before I launch into specific discussion of the exceptions, a minor caveat that I think I might have a tendency to underweight phonetic difficulty because of my Frodo ear &#8211; there are <em>very<\/em> few phonemes that really throw me for a loop, and I can hear tones with little effort.<\/p>\n<p>That said, here we go:<\/p>\n<p>Arabic should be starred.  It is grammatically and phonologically extremely difficult; from my exposure to both I&#8217;d say significantly more difficult than Chinese without traditional Chinese writing.<\/p>\n<p>If I were to add a mark for &#8220;easy in its category&#8221;, I would put that on Spanish and Italian. These are significantly easier than the other Category I languages and (I believe) the easiest of all world languages for English speakers to learn.<\/p>\n<p>Portuguese is a freebie if you learn Spanish and can get used to an odd but relatively consistent shift in the phonology, mainly heavy nasalization of everything.<\/p>\n<p>I think putting German in an intermediate category II above other major European languages in difficulty is very shrewd.  Phonology is easy (I can <a href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=5222\">pronounce German with a good accent even though I don&#8217;t speak it<\/a>) but the grammar is <em>significantly<\/em> more difficult than say, French.<\/p>\n<p>If not for the help German gets from having Indo-European cognates, I think Category III (Indonesian\/Malay and Swahili) might be easier than German. These are areal trade languages, quite probably creolized from ancestral trade pidgins, and have retained a simplicity that makes them relatively easily acquired by adult speakers. (English has a similar history.)<\/p>\n<p>Chinese is a strange case. It is indeed brutally difficult in toto, but if you (a) are willing to settle for spoken fluency only, and (b) have a musician\u2019s ear for tone (as I do) I suspect it falls to category IV and possibly to a hard category III. The positional grammar of Chinese is simple and easy to acquire.<\/p>\n<p>Given an \u201ceasy\u201d mark I would also rate Polish an easy class IV for an educated English speaker, mainly due to a much heavier infiltration of Latin roots than in other Slavic languages &#8211; this make recognizing cognates easier.<\/p>\n<p>Persian\/Farsi\/Dari rates an \u201ceasy\u201d mark in its category due to simple and regular grammar. If I were going to try to grok the Indo\/Persian group I think it\u2019s a tossup whether Farsi or Hindi would be the best point of entry.<\/p>\n<p>Lithuanian deserves a star, I think.  Phonology isn&#8217;t bad but the grammar will break your brain.<\/p>\n<p>Xhosa definitely deserves a star.  When the phonology is difficult enough that <em>I<\/em> have trouble retaining the distinctions, most English-speakers would be lost beyond hope.  Clicks and implosives, man!<\/p>\n<p>On the blog where I found this list, a commenter opined that there ought to be a category zero for Esperanto.  Yep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning I found a copy of the chart the Foreign Services Institute uses to grade the comparative difficulty of world languages for acquisition by an adult monoglot English speaker. I have an unusual perspective on this list for an American. I&#8217;m a low-grade polyglot; I have spoken three languages other than my birth English&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6951\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Comparative language difficulty for English speakers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6951"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6956,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6951\/revisions\/6956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}