US State Department puts Spanish in higher difficulty category for language learning

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The following language learning timelines reflect 76 years of experience in teaching languages to U.S. diplomats, and illustrate the time usually required for a student to reach “General Professional Proficiency” in the language, or a score of “Speaking-3/Reading-3” on the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale.

These timelines are based on what FSI has observed as the average length of time for a student to achieve proficiency, though the actual time can vary based on several factors, including the language learner’s natural ability, prior linguistic experience, and time spent in the classroom. 

Spanish used to be in Category 1 with Germanic languages (Danish, Dutch, Portugese, Norwegian, Swedish) and Romance languages (Italian and Romanian).  Now it shares Category 1* with French. 

[PartySick 174,219]

Wait is this implying that Portuguese and Italian are easier to learn than Spanish?

 

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6 minutes ago, PartySick said:

Wait is this implying that Portuguese and Italian are easier to learn than Spanish?

 

Yes, but the bigger elephant in the room is that it implies Romanian is also easier to learn than Spanish.  I get that English and Latin languages have commonalities, but I cannot explain why Romanian would be easier than the Latin languages in Western Europe. If they are browsing GGD I hope they see this and update the ranking. 

[androiduser 7,438]

the interesting thing is that this is based on teaching diplomats foreign languages... would it be different for general population? I'd expect that diplomats already have some knowledge of other foreign languages and a general interest in learning.

[Bronco 27,592]

Honestly I always found it odd that German was considered harder than French/Italian as a native english speaker.

[PartySick 174,219]

13 minutes ago, FfFfFfFF said:

Yes, but the bigger elephant in the room is that it implies Romanian is also easier to learn than Spanish.  I get that English and Latin languages have commonalities, but I cannot explain why Romanian would be easier than the Latin languages in Western Europe. If they are browsing GGD I hope they see this and update the ranking. 

I hear some of those eastern European languages and I wonder how native speakers even learn them

Maybe it's 'cause I grew up in Florida and a solid chunk of our population speaks Spanish but I feel like it's a fairly easy language to learn. I mean, fluency is one thing, and the far flung dialects are another, but being conversational?

I've forgotten just about all my Spanish and I can still understand my coworkers when they speak it

[Flapjack 1,264]

As someone learning it as an adult, I think the main difficulty some people may be having is the intonation, accents, and mouth movements that are unfamiliar. Lowkey though, it's been far easier to learn than french ever was...  

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8 minutes ago, Bronco said:

Honestly I always found it odd that German was considered harder than French/Italian as a native english speaker.

I think a factor that plays into it is that even though English is Germanic by origin and syntax, the majority of the English lexic is made up of words with Latin origins (borrowed from Latin and French). Because of this, English and Latin languages share many cognates. Also German grammar seems to be literal hell on earth (at least to me), while English grammar is actually pretty simple. 

[ObezyankaNol 3,088]

Not Romanian being easier to learn than Spanish  

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6 minutes ago, PartySick said:

I hear some of those eastern European languages and I wonder how native speakers even learn them

I think Romanian is harder for an Anglophone than Spanish and French, but still way easier than Russian or Serbian.  

Because while most Eastern Europen countries speak Slavic languages, Romanian belongs in the same language family as Spanish and Italian. There is even a meme that Albanians and Romanians cannot go 2 seconds without mentioning they are not Slavs, because this is the biggest misconceptions about them. 

I don't know if the ranking accounts for the fact that Spanish is influential in the south of the US, but I think it should (there is a significant degree of exposure to the language even if it's not inherently easy to learn looking at the grammar, vocabulary etc).

[River 128,608]

1 hour ago, PartySick said:

Wait is this implying that Portuguese and Italian are easier to learn than Spanish?

 

italian and spanish are like almost twin sisters, when we lived in costa rica my husband learned Spanish without studying, just by hearing people talking lol

[Magic Mike 2,783]

2 hours ago, River said:

italian and spanish are like almost twin sisters, when we lived in costa rica my husband learned Spanish without studying, just by hearing people talking lol

Portuguese as well

[Bronco 27,592]

17 hours ago, FfFfFfFF said:

I think a factor that plays into it is that even though English is Germanic by origin and syntax, the majority of the English lexic is made up of words with Latin origins (borrowed from Latin and French). Because of this, English and Latin languages share many cognates. Also German grammar seems to be literal hell on earth (at least to me), while English grammar is actually pretty simple. 

That's fair. Grammar wise I do agree that French is far easier than German, but tbf I'm bad at english grammar as well lol. Personally I do think speaking German feels easier than speaking French.