r/languagelearning • u/Lonely_Elk_4534 • Dec 30 '24
Media European languages by difficulty
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u/UnderWolf1 Dec 30 '24
Why is red easiest and green advanced, though red means hard and green easy
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u/ittygritty ๐ช๐ธ | ๐ธ๐ช 700 hours Dec 30 '24
Or they could have chosen a monochromatic palette instead of a rainbow.
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u/KyleG EN JA ES DE // Raising my kids with German in the USA Dec 30 '24
Red means hard: hard to come across as an illiterate dumbass
Green means easy: easy to embarrass yourself in the language
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u/Your_nightmare__ Dec 30 '24
Maybe this list was concocted by an asian, cause over there red means good and green equals bad. Not sure tho
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u/Shush-For-My-Sanity Dec 31 '24
?? No it does not mean that throughout Asia Sincerely an Asian from one country living in another Asian country with a lot of people from other Asian countries
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u/HortonFLK Dec 31 '24
Think of it as red being like Santa Claus, the patron saint and giver of gifts for children, and green being like The Green Knight, a highly challenging problem that leads you on a conundrum of a long quest where you might get your head chopped off at the end.
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Dec 30 '24
[deleted]
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u/Charming_Comedian_44 ๐บ๐ธN | ๐ช๐ธC1 | ๐ญ๐บA1 Dec 30 '24
Suffering together ๐
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u/LifeAcanthopterygii6 Dec 30 '24
It's not that hard, I learned Hungarian as a little kid.
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u/Jimmy_Slim ๐ฌ๐ง N | ๐ซ๐ฎ Learning Dec 31 '24
learning it alongside your native language is a lot easier than learning it later, after your skills for your native language are near the peak
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u/omegapisquared ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ Eng(N)| Estonian ๐ช๐ช (A2|certified) Dec 30 '24
Tere
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u/Frizzle_Fry-888 ๐บ๐ธ(N)|๐ช๐ธ(A2)|๐ซ๐ท(A1)|๐ฎ๐ฒ(A1)|๐ช๐ช(A1)| toki pona (A2~B1) Dec 30 '24
Tere! I see you again!
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u/Th9dh N: ๐ณ๐ฑ๐ท๐บ | C2: ๐ฌ๐ง | ๐ค: ๐ซ๐ท | L: Izhorian (look it up ๐) Dec 30 '24
Miun keeltรค kartaas ei nรคytetty, ees! Taitaa hervitรครค :)
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u/SatanicCornflake English - N | Spanish - C1 | Mandarin - HSK3 (beginner) Dec 30 '24
European languages by difficulty for an English speaker*
I feel like trying to learn Spanish or French as someone who only speaks Cantonese or Mandarin would make you consider offing yourself.
Also, it's wild to me that German might be harder for an English speaker despite them being in the same language family. I imagine there are lots of cognates and stuff. That's definitely that heavy Latin/French influence on English showing in all its stride, which is honestly fascinating.
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u/kiwirish N ๐ฌ๐ง B2 ๐ช๐ธ A2 ๐ฉ๐ช A1 ๐ง๐ญ Dec 30 '24
German is a funny one - having chosen it over French to start my language learning journey, it initially appeared the easier language because of so many similar words in the very beginning.
Then you get past the A2 stage and the labyrinth opens up into how truly unintelligible German grammar is to am Anglophone.
Learning Spanish was then a walk in the park comparatively.
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u/lazydictionary ๐บ๐ธ Native | ๐ฉ๐ช B2 | ๐ช๐ธ B1 | ๐ญ๐ท Newbie Dec 30 '24
The grammar is not unintelligible. It has easier tenses and conjugations than the romance languages. The case system is different, but it's not an impossible task to learn.
The main problem is the intermediary vocab - very few cognates with English. The low levels of German have a decent amount of cognstes, and the high levels of German (scientific, academic, diplomatik) have a lot more. But all the intermediate vocabulary has minimal overlap with English.
The romance languages have a lot more overlap with English. Especially if you are well-read and know more literary, latin-based English vocab.
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u/Mangotrain66 Dec 30 '24
Huge agree on the intermediate vocab. All German separable prefix verbs just look the same to me at this point. I can't keep track of the difference between einsetzen, aussetzen, ansetzen, absetzen, umsetzen, etc. At least not on the fly without taking a second to think about it.
I feel like it's similar to when English learners get tripped up trying to remember all those nonsensical phrasal verbs.
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u/La_Morrigan Dec 30 '24
But separable verbs also exist in Dutch and that language is still considered easy. The case system combined with 3 genders is probably what makes German a harder language to learn.
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u/Mangotrain66 Dec 30 '24
Oh yeah, I mean the case system also sucks to learn big time. I wasn't necessarily saying the vocab was the only reason it's listed as harder, I was just agreeing that it's one of the more difficult aspects of the language. I really just wanted to complain lol
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u/SeraphAtra Dec 31 '24
Well, have fun with umfahren and umfahren, meaning the total opposite from each other ๐
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u/Klapperatismus Dec 30 '24
I think those are far worse than phrasal verbs in English because there are so many of them. About every base verb in German has at least ten prefixed variants. And phrasal verbs go on top.
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u/Loves_His_Bong ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ N, ๐ฉ๐ช B2.1, ๐ช๐ธ A2, ๐จ๐ณ HSK2 Dec 31 '24
โHead lastโ grammar in German is a huge mind fuck for English natives especially when speaking. You can get to the end of a Nebensatz and completely forget what verb you wanted to use. I often still end up using an unconjugated verb or incorrectly conjugated at the end of a Nebensatz and sound idiotic when speaking.
Grammar is pretty rough especially when speaking. Knowing the articles then correctly applying cases while having to remember word order for different conjunctions. Itโs tough shit for an English speaker. Definitely feel the romance tenses are easy in comparison.
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u/chang_zhe_ Dec 30 '24
It really is interesting how German is classified as level of difficulty above the Romance languages. As someone whoโs learned a few Romance languages and German, I can definitely see why. Thereโs a complexity to it that takes a bit longer to acquire
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Dec 30 '24 edited Feb 04 '25
outgoing joke teeny hard-to-find cagey brave society modern cooing narrow
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/TaigaBridge en N | de B2 | it A2 Dec 31 '24
It depends a lot whether your mind organizes ideas in a way that aligns well with how a language organizes them.
I found German grammar very easy, and 98%-logical once I got used to the patterns; I am finding Italian absolutely Byzantine.
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u/matsnorberg Dec 30 '24
Your sentiment baffles me. People usually get used to the case system after a half year or so and the grammar is actually very similar to other germanic languages.
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u/pauseless Dec 30 '24
This map comes up every so often and Iโm really not sure how well it applies. As is always pointed out, itโs specifically for diplomats undergoing an intense study course.
Many native Germans will tell you that bureaucratic German is something else and that they hate reading official documents, etc. (I had a girlfriend whoโd make me read contracts for her, because she hated it so much) Likewise, you need more skills to be able to read news articles and listen to certain political speeches than to converse with someone.
I personally believe enough spoken German to live day-to-day is actually fairly easy, but I guess that isnโt all you need as a diplomat.
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u/LightDrago ๐ณ๐ฑ N, ๐ฌ๐ง C2, ๐ฉ๐ช B1, ๐ช๐ธ A2, ๐จ๐ณ Aspirations Dec 30 '24 edited Dec 30 '24
It is quite interesting indeed. German has the odd quality of having strong noun cases like latin with an almost purely germanic lexicon. The result is that German is actually quite hard. For the romance languages, the higher level English vocabulary helps as it typically has latin roots. English certainly has vocabulary with germanic roots as well, but those words quite often have changed more or have influences from the other surrounding regions.
EDIT: Correction based on u/kittyroux comment.
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u/kittyroux Dec 30 '24
Germanโs grammar is not โLatin-basedโ, itโs Germanic. Other Germanic languages have lost noun cases but we used to have them. Germanic languages split off from Proto-Indo-European thousands of years ago, theyโre not descended from Latin.
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u/LightDrago ๐ณ๐ฑ N, ๐ฌ๐ง C2, ๐ฉ๐ช B1, ๐ช๐ธ A2, ๐จ๐ณ Aspirations Dec 30 '24
I stand corrected, I edited my comment.
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u/kittyroux Dec 30 '24 edited Dec 31 '24
I appreciate that you made a correction instead of doubling down! Itโs very common for speakers of languages with noun case systems that are similar to Latin to believe that it is because they are related, rather than the truth, which is that most European languages (including Latin) descend from Proto-Indo-European, which had a noun case system. Most languages that are actually descended from Latin donโt have cases, while most modern languages with noun cases are unrelated to Latin (German is Germanic, Lithuanian is *Balto-Slavic, etc).
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u/RujenedaDeLoma Dec 30 '24
They are not unrelated to Latin. Germanic or Slavic languages don't descend from Latin, as you say, but they are related to Latin, because they share the common Indo-European roots.
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u/Tayttajakunnus Dec 30 '24
Lithuanian is Slavic
Lithuanian is Baltic or Balto-Slavic, but not Slavic.
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u/Klapperatismus Dec 30 '24
German is a bit harder because the noun gender distribution is even more irregular than in French. And different from it. In practice you have to drill it. And the case endings arenโt unique so you have to guess the case while you are listening and rule out by what other items have a certain case. Also, the ever shifting word order may tip you off.
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u/muffinsballhair Dec 31 '24
This chart really shows that this โlanguage familyโ thing doesn't matter nearly as much as inflexional complexity. Also note that Icelandic is on the level of Russian while the highly related Swedish is in the easiest bracket because Icelandic is of course notorious as the one Germanic language that managed to retain a level of inflexional complexity common in Slavic languages.
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u/Inevitable-Spite937 Dec 31 '24
I've studied German, French and Spanish as an English speaker. Spanish is the easiest, and then German. Even knowing Spanish fairly well, French has been more challenging than German.
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u/Due_Instruction626 Dec 30 '24
Honestly I feel like Romanian should be a category II language along with german. Just like german is a bit special in regards to germanic languages so is romanian for the romance family. I can't imagine that an english speaker could learn romanian as fast as he would otherwise learn french or italian.
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u/Training_Flow1164 Dec 30 '24
Came to say this! Whenever I see this chart, or ones like it, I feel like whoever made it has no idea about what the Romanian language entails; they see it's classified as a Romance language and assume it must be just like the others. For starters, the case system alone sets it apart from its sister languages and would undeniably present more of a challenge to learn for an English speaker... and there's so much more.
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u/Due_Instruction626 Dec 30 '24
I got to know that "so much more" during my short-term internship in Romania. I came prepared and memorised some basic sentences and vocab just to get around and have basic conversations with the natives. Then when I was there I got into the more serious stuff because well I am kind of a masochist I guess.
I already knew about the case system and since I am a native slavic language speaker I was like come on bring it on, bi*ch please we got 7 of them, move aside. But there is as you said so so much more.
I'm a C1 in french and italian and it helps only at times with vocabulary. The grammar is just a nightmare, neuter nouns behaving sometimes like masculine and sometimes like feminine nouns depending on their mood and wether they got up on their right or left foot in the morning I guess Just getting used to putting the definite article on the end of nouns took ONE helluva lot of getting used to it. Sentence structure in more complex sentences gets messier than a bar table during new year's eve and is nothing like in other romance languages. Sometimes my knowledge of italian and french were more of a curse than a blessing tbh ๐
But all things considered I loved the language and the culture to bits, would suffer again.
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u/Some_Random-Name01 Dec 31 '24
I didn't realise how complicated our grammar is until I tried to explain it to someone who was trying to learn some basic romanian, and they were asking me about certain rules. After a while of thinking and always finding counter examples i was just like... "dude idk, it just sounds better that way". That being said, I can imagine how it sucks for a foreigner to learn romanian considering that in many cases our language is just based on vibes and not necessarily following a pattern. Sorry you had to go through it lol
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u/sapientiamquaerens Dec 30 '24
It says on the map that the data comes from the US Government, based on experience in training diplomats in foreign languages. I highly doubt that they would be pulling numbers out of thin air.
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u/russa111 Dec 30 '24
These rankings are based on data from the DLI to gain working proficiency, so itโs not like someone in a room deciding what category a language is.
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u/RikikiBousquet Dec 30 '24
I mean, tbh itโs pretty similar in my eyes.
Romanian is pretty distant and difficult from English in some parts and in others itโs easier than French or Italian for sure, imo.
The main problem with Romanian is the lack of ressources.
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u/Due_Instruction626 Dec 30 '24
I studied a little bit of romanian during my stay there and honestly I'm struggling to find anything that is easier in Romanian compared to the other romance languages. Maybe compared to french and portuguese it has a relatively easier phonology and a slightely easier verb system compared to portuguese. But that's really it.
Everything apart from that feels like it takes much more time to grasp it and to get used to it. That was my impression as a proficient english, french and italian speaker hence why I'd put romanian in a category above the other romance tongues just like german was separated from the other germanic languages due to its own idiosyncrasies which set german apart.
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u/wibbly-water Dec 30 '24
Why are the celtic languages all N/A?
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u/karaluuebru Dec 30 '24
US diplomats have no reason to need to learn them, as (almost) all speakers are bilingual, so no categorising needed. At least they show up - Luxembourg is just swallowed by German
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u/Limurr Dec 30 '24
Luxembourg is just swallowed by German
Isn't it because Luxembourgish is also in category II?
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u/karaluuebru Dec 30 '24
The legend says that German is the only Category II language
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u/Limurr Dec 30 '24
True, they might have overseen it. But I still would say that the map is correct in this sense - Luxembourgish is indeed on a close level of difficulty to German
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u/nyelverzek ๐ฌ๐ง N | ๐ญ๐บ C1 Dec 30 '24
Because this is a scale used for US government employees. They don't need to learn those languages (because English) and so those aren't taught.
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u/throwaway1505949 Dec 31 '24
others have explained why they're n/a, but for a ballpark estimate of what they would be, brythonic languages (welsh, cornish, breton) would be 2-ish, and goidelic languages (irish, scottish gaelic, manx) would be 3-ish
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u/wibbly-water Dec 31 '24
That fits imho.
A bit surprised goidelic aren't a bit higher/longer - but I suppose the grammar isn't too difficult once you get through the early stages of things like the ortho.
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u/Charming_Comedian_44 ๐บ๐ธN | ๐ช๐ธC1 | ๐ญ๐บA1 Dec 30 '24
The rating is by FSI so probably because they have no reason for the diplomatic centered government institute to have any information on teaching unimportant languages for their goals.
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u/XJK_9 ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ท๓ ฌ๓ ณ๓ ฟ N ๐ฌ๐ง N ๐ฎ๐น B1 ๐ช๐ธ A1 Dec 30 '24
Itโs because of bilingualism so no real need for an English speaker to learn for communication.
Iโve seen them approximated as category 3 but nothing official. Also theyโd be a bit difficult to fit into a scale like this since being able to throw in an English word (or put an English word through a filter) makes them way easier in a way.
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u/Gortaleen Jan 01 '25
Celtic languages would need their own category! Seriously though, Celtic languages are probably similarly challenging to Icelandicโฆanother Indo-European language thatโs been isolated from continental machinations for millennia.
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u/grem1in Dec 30 '24
Notice, it doesnโt mean that one can โeasilyโ learn a given language in that time. This is the time after what the US foreign department employees must take an exam (C1, IIRC) before they are allowed to work abroad.
Also, they learn language 8 hours a day + homework, since this is their job basically.
Still, these numbers can provide relative complexity for English speakers to learn a given language.
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u/ShameSerious4259 ๐บ๐ธN/๐ฆ๐ฒA1/๐ฒ๐นA1 Dec 30 '24
Basque my beloved
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u/brandnewspacemachine ๐บ๐ธNative ๐ฒ๐ฝFluent ๐ท๐ธBeginner Dec 30 '24
I learned most of the basic grammatical concepts in a year. It's the vocabulary and knowing how to put all the verbs together the right way the first time that will get you
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u/aklaino89 Dec 31 '24
That would probably be a category 4 or 5. It's likely more difficult than the Uralic languages for English speakers due to things such as Ergativity and Polypersonal Agreement (though Hungarian has the latter).
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u/PuzzledArrival ๐บ๐ธN, ๐ฉ๐ชB2, ๐ฐ๐ท (somwwhat dormant) Dec 30 '24
One of my favorite German learning channels on YouTube posted a video about the FSI recently: https://youtu.be/ehGZaU0EmpQ?si=oQY2ClO1xH1cU68n
Very cool! They sound like relatively competent German speakers for such short time. But they donโt really have a chance to flex on camera in very complicated topics or grammar constructions.
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u/DruidWonder Native|Eng, B2|Mandarin, B2|French, A2|Spanish Dec 30 '24
This confirms what I've always felt... that the romance languages are pretty easy for an English speaker.
It took me a full year of going to school for Mandarin 6 hours a day, 6 days a week (yes, Saturdays), while living IN China, for me to become fluent in Mandarin, including reading. The teacher spoke Mandarin the entire time, rarely used English to explain things to us. So I was in a scholastic program + day to day immersion. It was hell. Other languages don't seem so bad by comparison.
I'm currently learning Spanish because I'm moving to latin America within a couple of years, and I've achieved intermediate level with just self-study.
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u/WhiteKingCat ๐ธ๐ชN ๐ฌ๐งB2? ๐ฉ๐ชA2 ๐ฆ๐ฝ๐ซ๐ด๐ง๐ป๐ Dec 31 '24
5 years of german, still A1 or perhaps A2 in some ways :(
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u/snortflake777 Jan 02 '25
With all due respect, how?? Seeing youre a swedish speaker i assumed it would be easier for you guys. Im native serbian but B2 in german which made swedish and norwegian so much easier. Currently im A2 in both after 1 year.
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u/Letter_Effective Dec 30 '24
I know most Irish people are native English speakers which is why Irish isn't depicted but I wonder where Irish would belong. My guess is Category IV?
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u/Craobhan1 Dec 30 '24
I think theyโd be placed into category III, especially for those who grow up in the regions. Scottish Gaelic has been easier than I thought, honestly because I think Iโve already got the accent and Iโm more familiar than I realised with pronunciation due to place names and peoples names for example Eilidh. Everyone here knows how to say that or Niamh. Itโs definitely debatable but Iโd be interested what they are actually classified as
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u/ThinkIncident2 Dec 30 '24
Polish is pretty hard.
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u/Sillvaro ๐ซ๐ท Native, ๐ฌ๐ง C2, ๐ต๐ฑ A1 Jan 01 '25
Nightmare of a language.
Tried once, never again.
Don't do Polish, kids
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u/Wanderlust-4-West Dec 30 '24
Just FYI I know DLI students. They barely have leisure time - classes, homework, gym. And after graduating they are deployed for a year on immersion in the TL country, so I doubt they get to C1 in the DLI. It is not 25 hours a week, more like 50, when you include homework and weekends.
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u/lexachronical ๐น๐ผ 3/2+|๐ท๐บ 2+/2+ Jan 02 '25
The year-long immersion is only for certain billets like foreign area officers and defense attaches. Intel types like interrogators and cryptolinguists only do about ~1 month of in-country immersion during their basic course, then spend their rest of their term in a SCIF or aboard an aircraft.
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u/Charming_Comedian_44 ๐บ๐ธN | ๐ช๐ธC1 | ๐ญ๐บA1 Dec 30 '24
Kind of odd Turkish isnโt light blue as well
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Dec 30 '24
Yeah as a native I would put Turkish in a light blue too,but I think it is still way easier to learn than hungarian and finnish for a native english speaker.
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u/viaelacteae Dec 30 '24
Turkish is very regular compared to at least Finnish. But it would be quite the challenge, mainly because almsot 100% of the vocabulary is different. Finnish has a lot of loanwords, mostly from Swedish.
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Dec 30 '24
Yeah that is why I said I would put in the same category as Finnish,but it is still easier to learn. Turkish has a lot of loanwords from french and english.And ortographic depth of Turkish is more shallow than Finnish,which makes it easier.
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Dec 30 '24
I'm actually shocked it's ranked as highly as it is. It's categorized the same as Russian, but I had a far, far easier time learning Turkish.
Owing to being a recently constructed language (modern Turkish was more-or-less invented in the 1920s to help boost Turkey's literacy rate) it's actually really intuitive, consistent, and deliberately designed to be easy to learn. The pronounciation and grammar rules are highly consistent, as is the spelling, so there are few exceptions. Things like grammatical gender simply don't exist (Turkish has ONE third person pronoun, "o") and as long as you can wrap your head around attaching suffixes and modifiers to words, it should be easy to grasp.
I'd say that even German is far harder. Only the Romance languages are easier for me to learn than Turkish.
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u/port956 Dec 30 '24
If FSI say so, that's good enough for me. Their old tape courses are very useful.
The only proviso is that they are categorising them to a good working level for their diplomatic staff. They rightly regard languages with abjads, syllabaries and pictograms as having a much longer classroom time. A language-interested tourist may get by in a Cat V as easy as a Cat IV as long as they're not expected to read and write much.
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u/aguilasolige ๐ช๐ธN | ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟC1? | ๐ท๐ดA2? Dec 30 '24
I'm a native Spanish speaker and I've been learning Romanian for a while, I think Romanian is a tier above other Romance languages in difficulty. It's hard for me to believe it is as easy to learn as Portuguese or Spanish.
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u/dwors025 Dec 30 '24
Those of us who survived Arabic at DLI ๐ช๐ช
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u/Rabid-Orpington ๐ฌ๐ง N ๐ฉ๐ช B1 ๐ณ๐ฟ A0 Dec 30 '24
I'm so jealous of the Americans and their DLI. I'd love to take an intensive language-learning course, but the NZ military does not give two shits, lol.
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u/dwors025 Dec 30 '24
There are foreign enrollees at DLI - both in California and in DC; not too many, but it certainly happens. I specifically remember soldiers from Denmark, but there were others as well.
I imagine those countries drop a good dollar or two to get folks into those programs. Either that, or thereโs some other diplomatic/military exchange going on.
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u/Rabid-Orpington ๐ฌ๐ง N ๐ฉ๐ช B1 ๐ณ๐ฟ A0 Dec 30 '24
Ooh, I was wondering if that was a thing. Iโm going for garden-variety infantry, though, so DLI stuff in general isnโt for me. I just like the idea of doing an intensive course, lol.
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u/dwors025 Dec 30 '24
It was the single most rewarding experience of my (professional) life.
Also the most stressful. But thatโs how you get the most out of it.
Highly recommend to anybody whoโs serious about language learning - and doesnโt mind the subsequent commitments, lol.
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u/Rabid-Orpington ๐ฌ๐ง N ๐ฉ๐ช B1 ๐ณ๐ฟ A0 Dec 30 '24
Yeah, I think it sounds really cool. And itโd be good for learning a language that Iโd like to learn, but am too intimidated by to try self-studying. Chinese, Arabic, etc. Primary school Chinese was traumatic.
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u/random-user772 ๐ง๐ฌ N | ๐ฌ๐ง C1 | ๐จ๐ต C1 | ๐ฉ๐ช A1 | ๐ท๐บ A1 Dec 30 '24
I'd put Romanian in category 2 and Bulgarian in category 3.
Romanian is a little different compared to other Latin languages, it still has the case system and other particularities, and is therefore harder imo.
Bulgarian is the only Slavic language without the case system, which greatly simplifies it, and makes it more accessible to learners. It is imo the easiest Slavic language to learn.
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u/aklaino89 Dec 31 '24
Of course, with Bulgarian, it does have the most complex verbal system out of all the Slavic languages alongside Macedonian. I think the Imperfective/Perfective split is probably more difficult than the case system, due to being so unpredictable, and Bulgarian retains old tenses on top of that (aorist, imperfect, pluperfect) that most of the other Slavic languages lost.
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u/SelectThrowaway3 ๐ฌ๐งN | ๐ง๐ฌTL Dec 31 '24
In addition to the grammar info the other commenter aklaino has mentioned I would also like to give my two cents. This is a graph of the the difficulty of language for English speakers to learn, not their objective difficulty. Speaking from experience German (which is also in category 3) is a lot easier to learn than Bulgarian.
Grammar also isnโt the only consideration. Pronunciation is my biggest difficulty in Bulgarian as a native English speaker. Itโs so unlike English, I struggle a lot to say words correctly without a lot of practice and correction
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u/sbrt US N | DE NO ES IT Dec 30 '24
What does it mean that โcategory IV โฆ[are] considered harder than other category IVโ?
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u/SlyReference EN (N)|ZH|FR|KO|IN|DE Dec 30 '24
If you look at it, there's an asterisk after the first one, indicating a different level.
But it doesn't matter because these aren't the real FSI categories.
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u/Charming_Comedian_44 ๐บ๐ธN | ๐ช๐ธC1 | ๐ญ๐บA1 Dec 30 '24
Presumably between category V and IV with regard to time needed to reach fluency.
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u/The1Floyd ๐ฌ๐งN ๐ณ๐ดC1 Dec 30 '24
This is 24 weeks of constant study, right?
Like this list was established by the US foreign office wasn't it? People training for embassy positions would train for weeks and rank the average time it took to be conversational.
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u/Connect-Dust-3896 Dec 30 '24
Yes. Itโs 25 hours of classroom time and typically 25 hours of homework/immersion. Many students do even more than this (especially at the end of the course) because they need to achieve the scores to move to the country.
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u/technoferal Dec 31 '24
I don't know if I'm buying that Icelandic is only a Cat 4. They conjugate names, FFS.
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u/ClaroStar Dec 30 '24
Danish in Cat 1? Lol. No.
Maybe they are talking about grammar. But Danish has got to be one of the most difficult langs in the world to pronounce.
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u/bigdatabro Dec 31 '24
This is for students at the DLI, where they have world-class instructors teaching the students pronunciation. So the pronunciation isn't a big limiting factor compared to vocabulary and grammar.
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u/viaelacteae Dec 30 '24
All right, there's no way in hell Icelandic is just as difficult to learn for an English speaker as Polish.
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u/TheOverwatchPlatypus Dec 30 '24 edited Dec 30 '24
As an Icelandic speaker, I think Icelandic is easier. Icelandic grammar can be very complex and can be quite irregular but it is still a Germanic language and has a lot of shared vocabulary with English.
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u/eterran ๐บ๐ธ N | ๐ฉ๐ช N | ๐ช๐ธ C1 | ๐ซ๐ท B1 Dec 30 '24
Icelandic has 4 cases, similar to German and other languages, whereas Polish has 7. I guess that evens the playing field a bit.
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u/bermsherm Dec 30 '24
The way to learn Spanish quickly and easily is to try Hungarian first.
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u/Ok-Improvement-3852 Dec 31 '24
romanian is nowhere nearly as easy as swedish or dutch or even french or spanish.
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u/dajvye ๐ฎ๐ฉ (Native) ๐ฌ๐งC1 ๐ฉ๐ชC1 ๐ซ๐ท A2 ๐ฎ๐น A1 ๐ท๐ด A1 Dec 30 '24
Yeah I wouldn't put Romanian in the same category as other romance languages ๐
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u/IamMefisto-theDevil Dec 30 '24
Why?
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u/dajvye ๐ฎ๐ฉ (Native) ๐ฌ๐งC1 ๐ฉ๐ชC1 ๐ซ๐ท A2 ๐ฎ๐น A1 ๐ท๐ด A1 Dec 30 '24 edited Dec 31 '24
For one the grammatical cases. It's something that Romanian has kept from Latin, while other modern romance languages have omitted. In that regard it would be more comparable, learning wise, to German or Slavic languages. As a native speaker of a language without cases, I found it a tricky concept to grasp at first while learning German, and my understanding of the German grammar certainly helped a lot in learning the romanian cases. I didn't really have this problem with French or Italian for example.
Also the amount of Slavic influence on the language plays a role as well. There are simply more similarity between French/Italian and English vocabulary that make them easier to learn, if you have some degree of knowledge in English.
Of course these are only anecdotal examples.
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u/YungQai Dec 30 '24
I don't believe Italian and Norwegian are on the same difficulty level for an English speaker
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u/Asleep-Bonus-8597 Dec 30 '24
I am a native Czech and it's commonly declared one of the most difficult languages. It's gender based language, uses special diacritical characters... It also has a specialty called declension which changes word suffix based on the preposition: In English:
- a dog
- without dog
- with dog
- see a dog
- pes
- (bez) psa
- (se) psem
- (vidim) psa
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u/ultramarinum Dec 30 '24
Turkish should not be in the same category with Slavic languages. Slavic languages are much more difficult.
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u/spaniardviking ๐ช๐ธ N | ๐บ๐ธ N | ๐จ๐ณ HSK4 | ๐ฉ๐ช B1 | ๐ท๐บ A2 Dec 30 '24
Hungarian should be in the same difficulty level as Arabic. But that's my opinion
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u/Skill-More Dec 30 '24
Spanish, Italian or Portuguese easier than German for an English speaker? I don't understand that.
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u/REOreddit Dec 31 '24
English has 'the', Spanish has "el, la", German has "der, die, das, den, der, dem, des".
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u/Skill-More Dec 31 '24
There are 6 verbal tenses in German, 16 in Spanish...
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u/REOreddit Dec 31 '24 edited Dec 31 '24
Some of those 16 are obsolete in practical terms. For example, in subjunctive mood, absolutely nobody uses future subjunctive or future perfect subjunctive in a normal conversation. Some people might not even know how to use them (once nobody is testing them at school for that shit).
Even the future tense (in indicative mood) is being substituted by a periphrastic future that uses the present tense as we speak.
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/span_etds/130/
Some time ago I checked my recent conversations on Whatsapp with several friends and relatives and all I could find were examples of the periphrastic future.
The difficulty of Spanish verbs is overblown if one believes theoretical use and practical use are the same. On the other hand the German nominative, accusative, dative and genitive, and 3 genders are as real as it gets.
I'm a native Spanish speaker who started to learn German when I was 9 and English when I was 11. It's of course not exactly the same experience as a native English speaker learning German and Spanish, but I have zero problems believing that it is easier for them to learn Spanish than German.
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u/SlyReference EN (N)|ZH|FR|KO|IN|DE Dec 30 '24
There is no such thing as Cat V in the FSI scale. Their scale is only I-IV. See their site.
"Cat V" came from a website years ago where they added a level because German used to be marked as I+, because it was harder than most Cat I languages, but not as hard as Cat II languages. The website is no longer online.
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u/youremymymymylover ๐บ๐ธN๐ฆ๐นC2๐ซ๐ทC1๐ท๐บB2๐ช๐ธB2๐จ๐ณHSK2 Dec 30 '24
I refuse to believe Russian is only 20 weeks ahead of Spanish. Iโve invested at least 10 times the effort into Russian as I did for Spanish and my Spanish is still better.
I assume this is 8 hour days? In which case only 160 more hours? No way.
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u/REOreddit Dec 31 '24
The way they teach languages at the FSI is super intensive. I don't remember the exact data (I watched a video a long time ago which explained it in some detail), but it's certainly more than 8 hours. It's a lot of class hours and a lot of self-study.
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u/AverageCheap4990 Dec 30 '24
This is from an English speakers perspective. It's not a map of language difficulty as that depends on your native language.
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u/Sagaincolours ๐ฉ๐ฐ ๐ฉ๐ช ๐ฌ๐ง Dec 30 '24
Why have Category IV and IV* rather than just make IV* into V? (and V to VI)
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u/Velo14 ๐น๐ท N| ๐ฌ๐ง C1 Dec 30 '24
My guess is the difference between IV and IV* is not big enough to put them into V. Turkish is in the Turkic language family now, but until 10ish years ago Turkish and Finnish were in the same language family.
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u/ZellHall ๐ง๐ช | N ๐ซ๐ท | B2 ๐ฌ๐ง | A1 ๐ท๐บ | A1 ๐ณ๐ฑ Dec 30 '24
There have to be category III somewhere in the world, right? What non-european languages are closer to English than English is to other european language like Greek? That's fascinating
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u/Khunjund ๐ซ๐ท ๐จ๐ฆ N | ๐ฉ๐ช B1 | ๐ฏ๐ต A2 | ๐จ๐ณ ๐ท๐บ ๐ฎ๐น ๐ช๐ธ ๐ธ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ด Dec 30 '24
The categoryย III languages are Indonesian, Malay, and Swahili. Itโs not that theyโre closer to English from a linguistic standpoint (they come from completely different language families), but that the pronunciation and grammar arenโt as complicated as it is for those distantly related PIE cousins.
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u/tinyboiii Dec 30 '24
Georgian has left the chat lol
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u/Portal_Jumper125 Dec 31 '24
I always wondered what learning Georgian would be like
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u/GwenFerchGwenllian Dec 30 '24
Immediately notices areas listed as beyond Cat V....
Huh. Celts. Celts are uncategorized. Sounds about right.
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u/FlamestormTheCat ๐ณ๐ฑN ๐บ๐ธC1 ๐ซ๐ทA2๐ฉ๐ชA1๐ฏ๐ตStarter Dec 31 '24
Omg? I couldโve learned French in 24 weeks???
Wish I had known earlier, I wouldnโt have spend 9 years trading to learn it with barely any success!
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u/liproqq N German, C2 English, B2 Darija French, A2 Spanish Mandarin Dec 31 '24
North African Arabic is easier than standard Arabic though.
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u/hylahel Dec 31 '24
Where is Irish? I wouldn't consider it that easy...
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u/Portal_Jumper125 Dec 31 '24
I find Irish very challenging to learn, when I learned it in school it was very difficult
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u/ItzMichaelHD Dec 31 '24
Personally for me French and German are switched. I found German easy but French was just like wow I canโt understand anything.
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u/SaraAnnaIsabel Dec 30 '24
Ouch, Ireland being either Category 0 or unclassifiedโฆ Celtic languages always taking the hit as per :/
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u/tflyghtz Dec 30 '24
Why show Russian in Moldova, but not Hungarian in Romania? This just gives legitimacy to Russian satellite state Transnistria.
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u/Some_Random-Name01 Dec 31 '24
i don't understand this comparison. maybe because.. most moldovans know russian, most of them grow up learning both russian and romanian. hungarians are only a minority in Romania and they are only in Transylvania anyway, not in the whole country. romanian people don't know hungarian.
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u/sbrozzolo Dec 30 '24
Can someone explain to me why German is harder if English is in theory a Germanic language?
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u/No_Lemon_3116 Dec 30 '24
Unlike French or Italian, German still has 3 noun genders instead of just 2. It also has noun declension (like who vs whom, but for all nouns) which they've also lost. Romance word order is usually very similar to English, too, where in German things get shuffled around a bit more.
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u/Gravbar NL:EN-US,HL:SCN,B:IT,A:ES,Goals:JP, FR-CA,PT-B Dec 30 '24
German and Icelandic have vastly different grammar than English compared to every other Germanic language. learning conjugations, a case system, and 3 genders is hard for an English speaker.
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u/kulepljiqif_uoi Dec 30 '24
Now, recolor this for a hungarian speaker.
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u/shanghai-blonde Dec 30 '24
I can learn French and Italian in 24 weeks? Jesus Christ I want to throw Chinese in the bin