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Thread: Language Difficulty Ranking by Foreign Service Institute (US)

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    Veteran Member Arsen_'s Avatar
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    Default Language Difficulty Ranking by Foreign Service Institute (US)

    The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), located in the US state of Virginia, is the main educational institution for US diplomats.

    FSI has created a list to show the approximate time you need to learn a specific language as an English speaker. After this particular study time you will reach “Speaking 3: General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3)” and “Reading 3: General Professional Proficiency in Reading (R3)”

    FSI has compiled a list of 61 languages of the peoples of the world grouped by the approximate time required for a native speaker of English to study it.

    According to the study, category I includes 10 languages closely related to English, which require 23-24 weeks or 570-600 hours to learn.

    The only language of category II is German, which is classified as similar to English, the study of which requires 30 weeks or 750 hours.

    Category III contains 3 languages with linguistic and/or cultural differences from English, which require 36 weeks or 900 hours to learn.

    Category IV includes 42 languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English. This group includes the Armenian language, the languages spoken by residents of some other post-Soviet countries, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, as well as Hindi, Urdu, Albanian, Croatian, Greek, Latvian, Lithuanian, Turkish. , Zulu, Thai, Polish, Mongolian. English-speaking students will need 44 weeks or 1100 hours to master one of these languages.

    Finally, category V has gathered five languages that are extremely difficult for native speakers of English. Among them are two Chinese dialects, as well as Arabic, Japanese, and Korean. Those who wish to learn one of them will need 88 weeks or 2,200 hours.







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

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    Oh I feel the pain with Tagalog..



    Wake up and smell the coffee.


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    🐸 nittionia's Avatar
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    I know German and I'm learning Russian now for school. I learned Spanish for about 7 years and French for 4. The hardest for me is French lol. Spanish is super supppper easy

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    Korean? Japanese? Arabic? C`moooon.. Amerindian and Northcaucasian languages are super difficult & almost impossible to reach the desired level of fluency

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    Quote Originally Posted by Root View Post
    Korean? Japanese? Arabic? C`moooon.. Amerindian and Northcaucasian languages are super difficult & almost impossible to reach the desired level of fluency
    This is from the Foreign Service Institute. Caucasian languages are irrelevant.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Profileid View Post
    This is from the Foreign Service Institute. Caucasian languages are irrelevant.



    thanks God the Caucasian languages are irrelevant.. it's the biggest PLUS for Caucasians

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    I keep learning languages from category 4!

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    Quote Originally Posted by nittionia View Post
    I know German and I'm learning Russian now for school. I learned Spanish for about 7 years and French for 4. The hardest for me is French lol. Spanish is super supppper easy
    Why do you find French harder than German and Russian?

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    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyDaisy View Post
    Why do you find French harder than German and Russian?
    It probably has to do with being bored of the language. It was easy learning how to read French, but everyone I've talked to here who had to learn it as well agreed the oddities (such as pronunciation) made it feel unnecessary and more challenging to get into.

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