I/ The most commonly used language difficulty scale is the one developed by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI scale). It contains five levels of language learning proficiency. Level 0: NO PROFICIENCY Level 1: ELEMENTARY PROFICIENCY Student is able to: - order meals; - be polite; - ask and answer very simple questions about very familiar topics; - tell time; - tell simple tasks; - display a number of errors in pronunciation. Level 2: LIMITED WORKING PROFICIENCY Student is able to: - use the language in most basic social situations; - handle basic work requirements; - talk about current events, yourself, and your family; - display foreign accent. Level 3: PROFESSIONAL WORKING PROFICIENCY Student is able to: - use the language in most social and work situations in a formal and informal way; - understand most speech at normal rate; - have a large vocabulary to draw from; - but still display a mild accent. Level 4: FULL PROFESSIONAL PROFICIENCY Student is able to use: - the language accurately and precisely; - interpret informally to and from the language; - rarely make grammar mistakes. Level 5: NATIVE OR BILINGUAL PROFICIENCY II/ The British Foreign Office Diplomatic Service Language Centre lists languages in 5 levels of difficulty (class 1 being the hardest) Class I Cantonese/ Japanese/ Korean/ Mandarin. Class II Amharic/ Arabic Azeri/ Burmese/ Cambodian/ Finnish/ Hebrew/ /Georgian/ Hungarian/ Kazakh/ Kirghiz/ Lao/ Mongolian/ Thai/ Turkmen/ Turkish/ Uzbek/ Vietnamese. Class III Albanian/ Armenian Byelorussian/ Bulgarian/ Croatian/ Czech Dari/ Estonian/ Greek/ Hausa/ Icelandic/ Kurdish/ Latvian/ Lithuanian/ Macedonian/ Maltese/ Persian/ Polish/ Russian/ Serbian/ Slovak/ Slovene/ Ukrainian. Class IV Bengali/ Chichewa/ Chinyanji/ German/ Gujurati/ Hindi/ Indonesian/ Irish/ Malay/ Nepali/ Pashtu/ Punjabi/ Romanian/ Sesotho/ Shona/ Siswati/ Swahili/ Tagalog/ Urdu/ Wolof/ Yoruba/ Zulu. Class V Afrikaans/ Bislama/ Catalan/ Danish/ Dutch/ French/ Italian/ Norwegian/ Portugese / Spanish/ Swedish. "Easy" Languages Ratings of FSI students speaking a Group 1 language after specified periods of training: 8 weeks (240 hours) 1/1+ 16 weeks (480 hours) 2 24 weeks (720 hours) 2+ "Hard" Languages Ratings of FSI students speaking a Group 2-4 language after specified periods of training: 12 weeks (360 hours) 1/1+ 24 weeks (720 hours) 1+ /2 44 weeks (1320 hours) 2/2+ /3 III/ The Defense Language Institute (DLI) has developed a separate foreign language difficulty scale (the "DLI scale") based on language relationships and "practical experience". The DLI scale has four categories. Group I: About 575-600 hours. Dutch/ French/ Italian/ Portuguese/ Romanian/ Scandinavian languages/ Spanish Group I/II: German is between the above and below group, as it requires 750 hours Group II: Approximately 1100 hours. Albanian/ Amharic/Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian/ Slavic languages/ Greek/ Hebrew/ Hindi (all Indian languages belonging to the Indo-European branch)/ Hungarian/ Finnish/ Khmer/ Lao / Vietnamese/ Thai/ Burmese/ Baltic languages/ Mongolian/ Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik)/ Tagalog/ Turkish/ Uzbek/ Xhosa/ Zulu Group III: Approximately 2200 hours. Arabic/ Cantonese/ Mandarin/ Japanese/ Korean |