The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is a language training unit under the U.S. Department of State and offers language training for diplomats and U.S. government foreign affairs professionals.
Their expected length of language learning for English speakers (https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/) is the most frequently referenced document to estimate a difficulty level of different languages for those who speak English as their native languages. According to this document, languages are grouped into four different categories and Japanese is one of the “super-hard languages.” (In some version of this document, Japanese has an asterisk, indicating that it is an “exceptionally super-hard language”.)
So, should we all give up studying Japanese and choose easier languages instead? The flip side of this “difficulty chart” is that Japanese-English bilinguals are the most sought after talents since very few accomplish the “superior” level of fluency. In other words, there will be a lot more career/business opportunities for those who have mastered this “exceptionally super-hard language.”
FSI’s Experience with Language Learning (from https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/)
- Category I Languages
- 24-30 weeks (600-750 class hours) to reach ILR 3 (ACTFL Advanced High to Superior / Educated near-native speaker level)
- Languages more similar to English.
- Danish (24 weeks), Dutch (24 weeks), French (30 weeks), Italian (24 weeks), Norwegian (24 weeks), Portuguese (24 weeks), Romanian (24 weeks), Spanish (24 weeks), Swedish (24 weeks)
- Category II Languages
- Approximately 36 weeks (900 class hours) to reach ILR 3 (ACTFL Advanced High to Superior / Educated near-native speaker level)
- German, Haitian Creole, Indonesian, Malay, Swahili
- Category III Languages
- Approximately 44 weeks (1100 class hours) to reach ILR 3 (ACTFL Advanced High to Superior / Educated near-native speaker level)
- “Hard languages” – Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English.
- This list is not exhaustive. Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Czech, Dari, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kazakh, Khmer, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Nepali, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Tagalog, Tajiki, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese
- Category IV Languages
- 88 weeks (2200 class hours) to reach ILR 3 (ACTFL Advanced High to Superior / Educated near-native speaker level)
- “Super-hard languages” – Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers.
- Arabic, Chinese – Cantonese, Chinese – Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean
