State Department Language Classifications

[Mark Nuckols]

Ben, you might know that State Dept. now follows the proficiency guidelines determined by the Inter-Agency Roundtable on Languages. How that might afftect the rankings of the languages by difficulty, I do no know, but it may be something to consider.

Mark 




 

> Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 17:41:01 -0500
> From: rifkin at TCNJ.EDU
> Subject: [SEELANGS] State Department Language Classifications
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> 
> 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 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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