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Languages Categorized by Difficulty: Based on an English speaker's perspective, the US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) categorizes languages into five groups based on difficulty and the time required to learn them.
- Category 1: Easiest languages for English speakers to learn (24 weeks/5 months), including Afrikaans, Danish, Norwegian, French, Dutch, and Spanish.
- Category 2: Slightly more challenging languages (30 weeks/6-7 months), with German being the only language listed in this category.
- Category 3: Languages such as Indonesian, Swahili, and Malaysian considered relatively easy to learn, primarily due to their transparent writing systems.
- Category 4: Languages requiring more time and effort to learn (44 weeks/10 months), such as Persian, Russian, Greek, Hindi, and others.
- Category 5: The most difficult languages (88 weeks/close to 20 months), including Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean.
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Level of Proficiency: FSI claims that one can achieve the S3/R3 level (equivalent to B2-C1 in the European framework) after the allocated time for each language category.
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How Time is Spent: FSI language courses involve five hours of daily instruction in groups of three students and one tutor. Additional resources, like massive amounts of audio, are available for students to practice outside of class.
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Factors Affecting Difficulty: Various factors can make certain languages more difficult to learn, such as:
- Writing system similarity
- Vocabulary familiarity
- Transparency or regularity of the writing system
- Structure and idiosyncrasies of the language
- Non-language-specific aspects, like motivation and availability of interesting content
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Factors Affecting Learning Experience: The speaker shares their personal experience learning languages in categories one, two, and five and questions some of the FSI's difficulties and timeframe claims. They argue that motivation and enjoyment are crucial for language learning success and suggest that achieving a B2 level within the FSI's timeframes may not be realistic. Instead, aiming for a solid foundation that can be improved upon over time could be a better goal.
Summary for: Youtube