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Do you want to speak more languages? Sure, as Sally Struthers used to say so often, we all do. But the requirements of attaining proficiency in any foreign tongue, no doubt unlike those correspondence courses pitched by that All in the Family star turned daytime TV icon, can seem frustratingly demanding and unclear. But thanks to the research efforts of the Foreign Service Institute, the center of foreign-language training for the United States government for the past 70 years, you can get a sense of how much time it takes, as a native or native-level English speaker, to master any of a host of languages spoken all across the world.
The map above visualizes the languages of Europe (at least those deemed diplomatically important enough to be taught at the FSI), coloring them according the average time commitment they require of an English speaker. In pink, we have the English-speaking countries. The red countries speak Category I languages, those most closely related to English and thus learnable in 575 to 600 hours of study: the traditional high-school foreign languages of Spanish and French, for instance, or the less commonly taught but just about as easily learnable Portuguese and Italian. If you'd like a little more challenge, why not try your hand at German, whose 750 hours of study puts it in Category II — quite literally, a category of its own?
The map reckons Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, and Basque are off the charts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @04:32PM (2 children)
One year of High School German is equivalent to how a 5 year old native German would speak.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 04 2017, @06:43PM
That must depend a lot on your high school. After a year of German I could say things from the lessons, but I was hardly as fluent as a 5-year old. Closer to 3, but with a very different vocabulary. (I know of very few 3 year olds who would say the equivalent of "Gee, that's probably the oldest car around here." Or "Tell me, Mr. policeman, which way is it to the railroad station.".)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @09:03AM
After six years of German, I know six words: Der, die, das, den, dem, des.
I believe it depends a lot on the school and teacher, my luck was just so bad that I had four teachers that all had the idea that grammar is the most important thing in German.
Oh, I also learned a couple of German words in history lessons, but they are only useful when really p*ssed off at a German person, one of them being "sieg".