State Department Language Classifications

[Irina Dubinina]

Dear Ben, dear SEELANGers,
I found this archived page of nvtc dated to 2007 with a listing of the three groups of languages.  The change must have happened not so recently then.  Bulgarian, as  Ben suspected, is indeed part of group II.  The labeling of the categories is more "politically correct" here:
languages closely related to English
languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English
and
languages which are exceptionally hard to learn for native speakers of English

Interestingly, German and Indonesian are listed separately as "other".

http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html

--- On Sun, 1/3/10, Benjamin Rifkin <rifkin at TCNJ.EDU> wrote:

From: Benjamin Rifkin <rifkin at TCNJ.EDU>
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] State Department Language Classifications
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Date: Sunday, January 3, 2010, 4:24 PM

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 

------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription 
options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
 
http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/ 
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------



      

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------