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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: 2) by isostatic on Monday December 04 2017, @04:33PM (8 children)
I spent 5 years at school 'learning' French, massive waste of time. I rarely go to a French speaking country (just looking down the most recent countries I've been to - they spoke Hausa, Hindi, Hebrew, German, Dutch, Russian, Arabic, Portugese. I haven't been to a French speaking country since November 2014)
Even when I do end up, the stuff I was taught is pretty useless. I can ask for a coffee in French, decipher a few items on the menu, but what possible reason would there be to be able to describe the house I live in or being able to describe the advantages and disadvantages of living in a seaside town?
Rather than picking a language which most people won't need at age 11, I'd far rather see our schools teach a smorgasbord of them. Rather than spending 500 hours learning a language that is likely unimportant, instead learn the basics in a whole range - say French or German, Spanish or Portugese, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin and maybe Japanese.
Just the basics that would help in day-to-day life if you were to visit those countries (not live there - in that case you'd do a more intensive course that would be relevant) - a bit of flattery "Hello, how are you, good to meet you, etc", and a few useful things like "Take me to this hotel/airport/station please", "please don't shoot me I have a family", "2 more beers please", be able to read a few things on a menu, a touch on the some customs of various countries (drinking and eat), that type of stuff.
Learning something like "Je trouve que les profs nous donnent trop de devoirs à faire le soir" or "Pour moi, trouver un emploi que j’aime est plus important que de gagner beaucoup d’argent" (both phrases cribbed from Bitezie) is completely pointless.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Monday December 04 2017, @06:55PM (4 children)
Learning language is not easy. Period.
You must learn the rules, the vocabulary and then they must pop in your mind immediately.
To learn a language, you need thousand of hours, continuity and determination. And many hours hearing the language (from a mp3 or from native speaker) If you don't have a strong motivation you'll never learn a foreign language. I understand being a English native speaker you don't have
I started learning English when I was ten years old, I went for a month to USA alone, and I still can't understand a movie or many youtube conferences in English. I read English and write it more or less, but I really don't need to understand or speak spoken English.
You can't teach language in school with 2 hours/week. You need a lot more, unless the student has a special interest.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday December 04 2017, @07:55PM (2 children)
Indeed, but you can learn a few key phrases - being able to identfy common nouns on a menu in half a dozen languages would be a very beneficial skill. Just learning how to copy the items down from the menu to pop them into your phone to auto-translate would be a massive benefit when it comes to languages like Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, etc (I've never seen a manu that's in just Hebrew though), and that should be possible in the 2 hours a week for 5 years that you get in school.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Monday December 04 2017, @09:47PM (1 child)
Peop!e in borderline zones speak both languages because every word they learn they use it the next day, and practice again and again every day.
If you don't need it, you will forget those nouns, like dates or names you learnt in history or geography. In fact, learning a language is a waste of time if you are not going to use it, because of practical reasons or hobby.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday December 04 2017, @11:53PM
I can cope better in a afrench restaurant than an Italian one, despite spending more time in Italy than France, and not having done French since 1998.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @09:17AM
Weird, I work as a developer, so all documentation is in English, but I've never needed to actually speak English. When I watch a movie, I need to turn subtitles off, because if I get both the English sound and Danish (my native language) subtitles at the same time, my brain gets confused.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @08:03PM
I think it would be best to teach something like interlingua, which will allow one to read most Romance languages, and maybe speak or understand them, the similar slavic artficial language which I can't recall the name of, and maybe Chinese characters or aramaic or arabic script. When most people can speak english, and most foreigners can't speak their language or understand it when spoken even after years of study, it's much better to teach people to read. For one thing, it's much more useful for the majority of people, who never leave the area they're born in or have any interaction with foreigners. They can still use their skills on the internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @09:59PM
That's usually because the quality of instruction isn't there combined with the fact that there's a limited number of languages available. Having both poor teaching and a language that isn't necessarily of interest to the student causes tons of problems.
The main thing holding students back is that they don't really want to learn the language they're studying in high school. They don't get to use it for anything useful and the methods of teaching are frequently decades out of date.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday December 04 2017, @10:47PM
I wonder how future generations will learn languages, if at all. AI translators are getting better all the time and who knows what percentage of the next generation will bother learning another language at all.