Talk:Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers

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Fairytale trash anti.png This page was previously nominated for deletion, but was kept. Please see the discussion in the Wikibooks:Requests for deletion archives for justifications and discussion.
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This list is really stupid. And is not accurate. I am a native/bi lingual speaker of English, and I have learnt most of these languages in less time than projected. What gets me is how you can compare that Mongolian is as difficult to learn as Russian or Icelandic? Get out of here. I am a huge language nerd and I had to give up on Mongolian a few times, even with many resources such as books, software, internet, and mongolian friends. Then Japanese is considered hard? I am in a japanese class in USA now and it seems to me that many of the students in the class, who don't speak anything else but English, have an easy time with it. And how can you put French on Category I? Or other Romance languages? I don't have a solution to fix this list, I just offer to delete this rediculous Category of difficulty for langauges for English Speakers, but native English speakers aren't the only ones who use the English wikibooks you know. --Girdi 17:49, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think French is a really easy language. As a matter of fact, even though I'm a native English speaker, I think French is actually easier than German, despite the fact that English and German are more closely related to each other, so I don't understand why you're surprised about the fact that French is in Category I. Anyway, about Japanese, how could you find that easy, even if you are bilingual in an unrelated language (as I am)? Sure, spoken Japanese may be easy, but what about written Japanese? A Japanese learner has to learn all of the Hiragana and Katakana characters, as well as thousands of Kanji symbols. On top of all of this, there's also the very difficult politeness system, too. How could all that NOT be difficult? I must admit, I haven't even tried to learn Japanese because I'm far too busy to be able to learn all of that stuff, but I fail to see how learning all of that could be easy. Runningfridgesrule (talk) 21:01, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Agreement with above comment

As a teacher of English to students as a second language I have to agree with the above comments. I've never heard of this list before and never heard of Foreign Service Institute which certainly isn't a highly known body of foreign languages. This list seems to aim to compare totally different languages and add an arbitary number of hours for learning to these languages. No language is necessarily difficult - it depends on the individual, the exposure to the language, your ability at learning and learning languages and attributes of the languages like grammar complexities, pronunciation and alphabet. This kind of list is not helpful. Xania Flag of Italy.svgtalk 00:28, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand why it is so difficult for people here to understand what this list is: given a group of native English speakers with language aptitude, how many hours on average would it take to obtain level 3 proficiency as measured by the FSI in the courses that it offers? Since the FSI trains US diplomats, wouldn't it make sense that they know what they are talking about? Just because you have never heard of the FSI means nothing. All these people babbling about motivation, attitude, etc are missing the point. 160.83.32.14 (talk) 18:24, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

In theory it seems good. In practice, a few of us find the rankings given very strange. Indonesian, with extremely simple grammar, the same alphabet, spelling that's about about 98% phonetic and mostly simple pronunciation with less phonemes than English, is listed as harder than Spanish, French and other conjugated European languages. That's completely counter to my experience and I've never met anyone with experience of Indonesian who thought it was harder than any other language. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 08:12, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] In Disagreement with Deletion Request

I think this webpage should be 're-titled' not deleted, as the FSI course guidelines were created for monolingual native English speakers from the USA, who wanted/needed/desired to learn another foreign language. Also, the hours required to learn a given foreign language, were assumed for an adult, not a person between 1-18 years ago. You'll notice that the list of languages by difficulty on the FSI list, reflect the emphasis of the USA State Department bureaucratic needs.

Spoken Japanese is fairly easy to learn for a native English Speaker, I'll agree. However, the FSI takes into account the need to become fluent in writing as well. This is the area, where the Japanese Language becomes relatively more difficulty for a native English speaker, who lacks the background in Kanji (Chinese Characters). Of course, a native Chinese, will find written Japanese much much easier than English. Yes, Hiragana & Katakana, are taught in intro. Japanese, but those thousands Kanji and their various combinations are relatively difficult...especially compared to the say, the Vietnamese Written Language, for a native English language speaking person. Even native adult Chinese (Mandarin) speakers, have relative difficulty with their own native written language compared to other languages which have various types of alphabets: including Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Arabic.

FSI has existed in it's present form since March 1947. There are two other bodies that have similar "Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers":

Within the USA at least, both of these bodies are very important.

Outside of the USA, these bodies importance would vary a lot. For example, within the country of Vietnam, Australian English standards as 2nd language tend to take more importance, from what I gather. Why? Geography, Business, and Travel reasons is particular. Australian language businesses are meeting the huge demand, by Vietnamese to learn English. Plus, Australians generally find it cheap to live in Vietnam, and a nice environment with cheap beer & beautiful beaches.

In regards to, this critique, " No language is necessarily difficult - it depends on the individual, the exposure to the language, your ability at learning and learning languages and attributes of the languages like grammar complexities, pronunciation and alphabet."

I would to this list:

  1. the amount & depth of motivation to learn a given language
  2. Pattern solving skills, knowledge.
  3. a thick skin, when errors occur in the language learning process.

Now in regards, to the claim that: 'This list seems to aim to compare totally different languages and add an arbitary number of hours for learning to these languages'. Is [b]False[/b] on it's face, as FSI did extensive testing before arriving at the estimated amount of time, it would take to learn a given foreign language for a native English Speaker.

In concluding, as this Wikibooks page, is about 'Language Learning Difficulty from a native English Speaker perspective'. I believe we should retain this webpage, but either "Re-title" the topic (e.g.: add the word "native" to the title), or add the rest of the native English speaking world perspective in this topic.

Meaning what does the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, Ireland, Ghana, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Africa among others, rank the difficulty to learn another language as an adult/child?

I'm specifically looking for national professional associations/bodies who have done extensive research & have made published studies in this area of question. Not pseudo-knowledge, with hear-say.

Notice, the title of this article does not refer to previously 'bilingual', multi-lingual individuals/people, only to English Speakers (monolingual). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.106.228.196 (talk • contribs) .

Well, first off, this is not the USA, so don't compare an organisations importance on how important it is in the USA. I also like to comment on your does not refer to previously bilingual comment. So you are saying only native speakers of English can use this wiki? Well, I am kinda offended by that since I am more or less bilingual in English. Sometimes my Icelandic helps me with learning languages like say Latin, Norwegian, or Danish, and sometimes my English helps me learning languages such as Spanish and Irish. So to say that this refers to English speakers only, perhaps we should make other pages saying Language difficulty for Icelandic speakers? for German speakers? for Russian speakers?, because I am sure there are many people on the English wikibooks whose native language is not English.
This organisation you speak of is just one of many I am sure. So to base a book and whole Wikibook-department on some organisation is just wrong. Maybe it is some organisation you love and think is correct. Well, let's take a look at English language for a second. As for me, I prefer writing in British English, I beleive it is the standard English of the world and is correct. But because this is an English wikibook, not based off of any organisation other than Wikimedia, I don't mind at all seeing American, Canadian, Australian, Irish, or New Zealandic English here. Thus basing a policy or a template off of a real life organisation that not everyone agrees with should have no home here on Wikibooks.
In defence of my comments, it does depend on the individual. Spoken Japanese, for me it is easy but for others it might not be. Spanish would be easy to an Italian-English speaker, but more difficult for a Russian-English speaker maybe. This list is absolutely wrong, if a real organisation really did in fact come up with this list, then I think that organisation is pointless and needs to just shut down. If someone who is interested in learning Korean for example, why would he want to know first before he learns it if it is difficult or not? And so what if he did, he would come to this page and see, wow Korean is really hard, and then give up on something he would have loved to accomplish, just because someone is saying Well, Korean is very difficult and will take lots of time, but Spanish here is easy, and so is Danish. (Which anyone who has studied Danish knows that it is not that easy as Norwegian, I mean come on!).
I think I just covered everything you said. But a Wikibook-Policy note to you. First you must sign your signature, even if you are an IP, for your comment. Second, do not remove the deletion notice from a page! The only time that will come down now is when we come to a decision, whether it be in favour or not, or an administrator takes it down. You might be blocked next time. --Girdi (talk) 14:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)


What a bunch of blathering nonsense. Who cares how much you dislike the US and whether you think that British English is the "standard of the world" or is "correct" or that "this is not the USA" or any such childish (and linguistically silly) pouting? A European English teacher who has never heard of the Foreign Service Institute should spend more time with the linguists at the Council of Europe, who have dinner with their long-time FSI colleagues at every international conference.

What matters is empirical data. FSI has successfully trained thousands of native (and non-native) English speakers to FSI Level 3. These speakers are tested regularly by multiple native speakers of the target language, who decide which of several level descriptions seems the best match for the student's current proficiency level. When that student reaches a level 3, by consensus of the native judges, it is noted how many hours it took, what the student's background was, and other data.

There is no a priori judgment about language difficulty, just observations of average hours to reach level 3. The language data in the list is the result. The Council of Europe takes this data very seriously, because they have nothing comparable. Gathering data of this sort is harder in Europe because of the fragmentation of efforts and the fact that most Europeans who learn a new language learn one that they have been exposed to sporadically over many years. There are few who start from zero and run to FSI 3 (equivalent) in one straight line, so the data points are few and the variance is huge, making it almost useless except when Europeans are learning non-European languages.

Every serious second-language acquisition researcher, including those at FSI I'm sure, would love to see data based on the COE's "Common European Framework", which could in theory extend the FSI's data into a grid of difficulty from all (or many) L1-L2 language pairs. Such an effort would take decades, though (FSI's data is the result of decades of observation), so until such data is available you can either have your little anti-American tantrums and throw away great data, or grow up and take advantage of it. -- Frank Lin

I am most amused by your comments: you have totally disregarded most of what Girdi said and just gone on a tirade about American English v. British English. Grow up. He was saying that wikipedia is not purely American and it needs to cater universally to all English speakers.
I totally agree with Girdi: you cannot put a number of hours on various languages and assess their difficulties. One of my friends has been doing French and German for 6 years, same number of hours per week. He is almost fluent in French and is quite poor at German. Yes, this is anecdote, but it also shows how this system is flawed.
As for Japanese and Chinese, spoken chinese is one of the easiest languages to learn, having just 4000 potential words. Oh, yes, people who have never even tried to learn it will complain of how hard tones are, but this is a load of rubbish. The use of tones can be developed perfectly after just a week of lessons. In fact, the problem with Japanese and Chinese is their writing systems. But, therefore, putting Korean on the same level is totally wrong: they have just an alphabet.
Finally, I'd like to make my stance on this subject clear: I think it could be useful to be a rough guide, but I do not think every language should be stamped with it, as it makes it seem like it's the be all and end all.77.100.4.112 (talk) 18:10, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How about based on language families?

How about just a list of the languages grouped by family (but only one or two levels deep). That would give an idea of how similar languages are without making crazily specific claims about difficulty? GalaxiaGuy (talk) 14:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I also agree with Xania's comment. I have already started what you proposed GalaxiaGuy, have a look at Manx or Icelandic. I made a template below to navigate to languages in the same category. We should have more like Romance Languages, Germanic Languages, Slavic Languages, Indic Languages, Language Isolates, Altaic (Which exists but needs some renovation), African languages, (not including Afrikaans since that is a Germanic and European language, don't know whos idea was that to group Afrikaans under African languages), and so on. --Girdi (talk) 15:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't like popularity contests but a list ordering the languages in terms of number of speakers would be more useful for Wikibooks readers. This way it would be easier to find Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish (all near the top of the list) as well as languages like Manx, Breton and Estonian (all nearer the bottom). Putting the languages into order would be difficult as people always disagree because of bilingualism, the difficulty of measuring one's ability and problems determining between a language and a dialect (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, for example). Xania Flag of Italy.svgtalk 00:20, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
So can someone delete this rediculous page already and remove the Category templates? I will place a delete tab. --Girdi (talk) 22:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A word about verifiability

You may think this page is total BS; that's fine. But you can't edit it on that basis. This is about the FSI's system, and must therefore reflect it accurately (regardless of whether it's right or wrong). If you want to have objections to it, please make them not just your own opinion, no matter how well-informed or correct it may be. This is basic WB:NPOV folks.

As a parallel, take a look through the arguments regarding AEDs (an index is here) in my project. Most if not all of the contributors agree that AEDs require no training to use, and that certification for that is ridiculous. But we can't put that in because the training organiations (who have the only opinions which matter) think that training is important. Well, that means that according to WB:NPOV and WB:OR, our hands are tied.

You might not like it, but these form the foundation of this project, and must be followed. I will be watching this page with interest in the future; please make an effort to find a compromise to this, as there is no consensus to delete this page.  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 13:52, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Well its still not right to base other languages difficulties here on an American organisation, that I as a linguist, have never even heard of it. I suggest keep the page but don't place labels on other pages regarding language difficulty. Also, shouldn't this then be moved to Wikipedia? I can't see this as a "book". --88.149.117.47 (talk) 02:03, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I'm impressed

I'm impressed that this page is an almost verbatim quote out of a certain US government website. I think the only saving grace is that US law declares all federal government publications to be public domain.--75.17.119.118 (talk) 03:28, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

It is indeed public domain if it's created by US federal officers - good for the US government. Using that as a basis for a wiki is a great thing, and we should do it at every opportunity. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 08:17, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
The US federal officers must be presiding over a people with an uncanny nack for irregular plural forms, since Swedish fall in category I. Swedish was, allegedly invented by 8th century school teachers as a way to discipline very very naughty children, with the unfortunate effect that those very very naughty children fled overseas and founded the Viking nation, that subsequently ravaged the Early Medieval West, at least that is the most plausible reason for the complicated plural forms of Swedish. As far as I know, immigrants to Sweden that learnt Swedish after having learnt the simple and clear English, would certainly accept my theory right away (Bork Bork!). Rursus (talk) 16:39, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Friendly debate

I disagree with some of the comments on this page, but defend the right of people to say it. I know some people haven't learnt how a wiki works (signing in, not removing a deletion notice without consensus) but we were all newbies once. Let's keep debating, in constructive way. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 08:20, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

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