State Department Language Classifications
Benjamin Rifkin
rifkin at TCNJ.EDU
Mon Jan 4 01:24:16 UTC 2010
Thanks, Jerry. Yes, I thought that Russian was now in group 2. It's interesting that this chart shows yet another series of names for the three groups. I have also seen "world languages," "hard languages" and "superhard languages." So of course I wonder if the "hard languages" and "superhard languages" are not actually of this world, since group 1 are the world languages. (I am guessing that world languages was the euphemism for easy languages that was not politically acceptable.)
I continue to search for the source, like a knight on some epic quest....
Yours,
Ben
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gerald McCausland" <gmmst11 at PITT.EDU>
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Sent: Sunday, January 3, 2010 8:16:27 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] State Department Language Classifications
Dear Ben:
This isn't exactly what you are asking for, but if you go to the
following link:
http://www.govtilr.org/Publications/TESOL03ReadingFull.htm
and scroll down to "Figure 2," you'll find a version of a table that
I've located on several different websites. It does indeed reduce the
categories from 4 to 3, but note the position of Russian! All webpages
with this table cite "FSI" as their source, but I've utterly failed to
track this down to a specific page on the FSI website or to any print
publication.
Perhaps this will at least give your search some direction.
Jerry.
On 1/3/2010 5:41 PM, Benjamin Rifkin wrote:
> Dear Colleagues:
>
>
> Years ago, the State Department and Defense Department classified languages in 4 categories, with category 1 the easiest languages to learn (Romance languages, Swahili, Scandinavian languages, Dutch), Category 4 the hardest (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). In this scheme, Russian was a category 3 language, with some African languages, such as Yoruba, some Southeast Asian languages (such as Thai). German was a category 2 language, with Hebrew, Hindi, and some other African languages.
>
>
> Apparently the State Department and Defense Department have reduced the number of categories from 4 to 3, renaming them not by number but with the phrases "easy languages," "hard languages," and "very hard languages." My understanding is that the Romance languages remain in the "easy category", and that the languages of old category 2 have been shifted into "easy" or "hard" (I'm not sure on which principle), and that now Russian is in the "hard languages" category.
>
>
> I'm writing to ask SEELANGers if any of you can help me identify a source for this change.
>
>
> With thanks,
>
>
> Ben Rifkin
--
Gerald McCausland, PhD
Lecturer and Language Program Director
Slavic Languages and Literatures
University of Pittsburgh
gmmst11 at pitt.edu
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