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FCO Classification of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Garaidh Decaglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5844 days ago 43 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Croatian, Serbian, French Studies: Scottish Gaelic Studies: Faroese | Message 1 of 6 11 May 2008 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I remember a while back reading a book which described how the FCO (British Foreign Office) categorised languages in terms of difficulty.
Diplomats are given 'hard language' training - they are expected to learn 'easy' ones such as Spanish or German in their spare time (if memory serves correct, they were advised to spend 100 hours of independent study of these easy languages). Much has probably changed since the book was written and my memory is a little sketchy but think the table went something like this (languages provided just illustrative - not extensive!): Level 1 Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, Portugese Level 2 Swahili, Icelandic, Malay, Indonesian, Romanian Level 3 Finnsh, Croatian, Serbian, Latvian, Czech, Hungarian Level 4 Arabic, Russian, Persian Level 5 Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Korean Would be great if anyone has the original list or knew of a similar table classifying languages by their difficulty to learn for English speakers Edited by Garaidh on 11 May 2008 at 3:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Garaidh Decaglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5844 days ago 43 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Croatian, Serbian, French Studies: Scottish Gaelic Studies: Faroese | Message 2 of 6 11 May 2008 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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As a means of comparison, found this on the US Department of STate website. Would be nice though to find an analysis that has more than 3 levels and takes into consideration minority languages:
Language difficulty The Foreign Service Institute of the Department (FSI) of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for a number of languages based on the length of time it takes to achieve Speaking 3: General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3) and Reading 3: General Professional Proficiency in Reading (R3). The list is limited to languages taught at the Foreign Service Institute. It must be kept in mind that that students at FSI are almost 40 years old, are native speakers of English. and have a good aptitude for formal language study, plus knowledge of several other foreign languages. They study in small classes of no more than 6. Their schedule calls for 25 hours of class per week with 3-4 hours per day of directed self-study. Category I: Languages closely related to English 23-24 weeks (575-600 class hours) Afrikaans Danish Dutch French Italian Norwegian Portuguese Romanian Spanish Swedish Category II: Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English 44 weeks (1100 class hours) Albanian Amharic Armenian Azerbaijani Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Burmese Croatian Czech *Estonian *Finnish *Georgian Greek Hebrew Hindi *Hungarian Icelandic Khmer Lao Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian *Mongolian Nepali Pashto Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik) Polish Russian Serbian Sinhalese Slovak Slovenian Tagalog *Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek *Vietnamese Xhosa Zulu Category III: Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers 88 weeks (second year of study in-country) (2200 class hours) Arabic Cantonese Mandarin *Japanese Korean Other languages German 30 weeks (750 class hours) Indonesian, Malaysian, Swahili 36 weeks (900 class hours) * Languages preceded by asterisks are typically somewhat more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 5921 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 3 of 6 11 May 2008 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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You get 9 months for the sudy of level three languages and German (3A).
Danish; Dutch; East African Group (Swahili is the only one I've seen taught); French; Icelandic; Italian; Malay/Indonesian; Norwegian; Portuguese (Brazilian/European); Romanian; Spanish (Castillan/Latin America); Swedish and Tagalog (£540 for a full diploma). This list, notably Tagalog, is tempered by operational need. The Philippines is US turf, so we don't really expend much effort in teaching it. All the rest are 18 months. The ones you can get financial rewards for are Level 2: Albanian; Bulgarian; Czech; Finnish; Greek; Gurkhali (NOT Nepali); Hebrew; Hungarian; Indic languages (Urdu/Hindi are seperate, also Punabi, Pothwari and Nepali); Farsi; Polish; Serbo-Croat (still one exam in either Latin or Cyrillic for both languages); Slovak and Turkish(£1080 for a diploma). I think Pashtu has been added to this list. I've seen someone studying Ukrainian but it's not on the list so he doesn't get a bonus! Level 1: Arabic; Cantonese; Mandarin; Japanese; Korean; Russian and Thai (£1620). Someone is studying Georgian and he also is not due a financial award which is plain unfair! Note lack of Burmese; Somali and KiShona. By no means are all these languages being taught, some probably never have been but this is the list of languages which have been deemed "relevant to the actual or potential needs of the Service." Edited by Fat-tony on 11 May 2008 at 4:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Garaidh Decaglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5844 days ago 43 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Croatian, Serbian, French Studies: Scottish Gaelic Studies: Faroese | Message 4 of 6 11 May 2008 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Really interesting Fat Tony! Thanks for above!
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| geo47 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5804 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Japanese, English* | Message 5 of 6 02 June 2008 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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does anyone know how much crossover there is between mandarin and japanese? i speak, read, and write japanese and i know the 1900 basic Japanese kanji (chinese characters). although when i say "chinese characters", i don't know if mandarin-speakers use the exact same things? does anyone know how difficult it would be for a japanese speaker to learn chinese (approximate class hours)? thanks
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| ElfoEscuro Diglot Senior Member United States cyworld.com/brahmapu Joined 6070 days ago 408 posts - 423 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 6 03 June 2008 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | ||
In my opinion, Amharic, Georgian, Xhosa, & Zulu should probably be category III. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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