Why students do not study Russian anymore

[Richard Robin]

Just look at the amount of time on task that one must devote to reach certain
proficiency milestones in each language. The State Department has the stats. If
memory serves me (and someone correct me if I am off on the figures), 50% of
their learners reach ILR S3, R3 (speaking, reading level three - in theory the
ILR equivalent of ACTFL Superior, but in fact somewhat less)  in Spanish and
French after something like 400-500 hours of instruction. The figure for Russian
is over 1000 and far more for that in Japanese. I believe that required time on
task is a pretty good measure of difficulty.

- R. Robin

> Just curious, but upon what do you base this last claim?  As someone who
> learned four foreign languages as an adult, and who has dabbled in a
> couple of others, I'd be hard to pressed to say one language is harder to
> learn than another.  Each language offers its own challenges and has its
> own simpler aspects (from a learning perspective).  Why would Japanese be
> fundamentally more difficult to learn than Russian?  And is French really
> easier to learn than Russian?  Sure, the former shares a lot with English,
> but these similarities only go so far in easing language acquisition.
> Anyone interested in become proficient, if not fluent, has a lot of work
> to do in either case.
>

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