Easiest Critical Languages to Learn

[sanantone]

The State Department has categorized languages based on how long it takes to gain proficiency. Category I languages are the easiest. Category I languages include languages that are most closely related to English. Since English is a Germanic language, almost all of the Germanic languages are easy to pick up because the grammar is similar, and basic, everyday English is mostly Germanic in vocabulary. It also includes the Romance languages since English absorbed a lot of French vocabulary while England was under Norman rule and used Latin root words to form new words during the scientific revolution. That resulted in English vocabulary being almost 60% Romance, but many of those words are not used in everyday conversations. German is unique in being a Germanic language that is classified as Category II instead of I because German's grammar is more complex.

Other languages in Category II include languages that are not related to English, but they're pretty simple in structure. I've heard that Indonesian is easy to learn. I've studied Swahili for a bit, and it's a relatively basic language.

Foreign Language Training - United States Department of State

If you're looking to work for the government in an international job, these are the critical languages. Among the listed languages, Portuguese and Romanian should be the easiest for a monolingual English speaker to learn. The next easiest would be Swahili, Malay, and Haitian Creole.

Critical Languages | nsepgov

If you're looking to work domestically for the government, Spanish is the easiest critical language for the FBI.

FBI — All About FBI Linguists

FBI — FBI Offers Job Opportunities for Foreign Language Speakers

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The list isn't exhaustive, so if you want to know which living language is most closely related to English, it's Frisian. But, I don't think too many employers are looking for Frisian speakers. It's only spoken by a half a million people.

[LevelUP]

Tagalog has the same alphabet as Spanish and uses a lot of Spanish words.  Its words and spelling are similar to English.


There's a debate as to what it means to be fluent. 
#1 Fluent enough to get by as a tourist?
#2 Fluent enough to pass a DELE Examination? (Spanish achieving a B1/B2 rating)

Does fluency mean I know:
#1 % of the language words
#2 % of the sentences I can understand the important context?
#3 Overall ability to read, speak and understand the language measured by an exam or personal experience?

For example, if I say, "Today I repaired the red car."  

If I knew 5 out 6 words (83%) of that sentence, one might say, "oh boy, that's great" however if I had no idea what the word "repaired" meant, I would lose context of what the sentence meant.  On the other hand, if the only word in that sentence I didn't know were the word "red," I would still understand the context of the sentence clearly.  

In other words, there is a massive difference between the words repaired, washed, drove, stole, etc.

[sanantone]

Tagalog has the same alphabet as Spanish and uses a lot of Spanish words.  Its words and spelling are similar to English.


There's a debate as to what it means to be fluent. 
#1 Fluent enough to get by as a tourist?
#2 Fluent enough to pass a DELE Examination? (Spanish achieving a B1/B2 rating)

Does fluency mean I know:
#1 % of the language words
#2 % of the sentences I can understand the important context?
#3 Overall ability to read, speak and understand the language measured by an exam or personal experience?

For example, if I say, "Today I repaired the red car."  

If I knew 5 out 6 words (83%) of that sentence, one might say, "oh boy, that's great" however if I had no idea what the word "repaired" meant, I would lose context of what the sentence meant.  On the other hand, if the only word in that sentence I didn't know were the word "red," I would still understand the context of the sentence clearly.  

In other words, there is a massive difference between the words repaired, washed, drove, stole, etc.

The categorizations are based on working proficiency, which is different from fluency. Tourist-level would be below proficiency which is below fluency.

Proficiency means that you know enough to get by at work and while living in a country where the language is spoken. Fluency means being able to speak the language at the level of a native speaker. Tourist-level is far below fluency.

[LevelUP]

The categorizations are based on working proficiency, which is different from fluency. Tourist-level would be below proficiency which is below fluency.

Proficiency means that you know enough to get by at work and while living in a country where the language is spoken. Fluency means being able to speak the language at the level of a native speaker. Tourist-level is far below fluency.

There are different levels of fluency, from basic to a native level. 
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/res...ncy-resume

Different places have different methods how they measure fluency and what is the gold standard. 

As for Spanish, a working level fluency is a B1/B2. (3- Professional working proficiency)

Where A1/A2 is basic, and C1/C2 is near-native. 

That FSI page has been there for a long time.  You can get that "Speaking-3/Reading-3” level in around 200 hours in Spanish and other languages using efficient teaching methods.

However, in a school setting, you can spend 3 years in classes and get nowhere.  Then hop into an immersive course and learn more in 2 weeks than you learned in 3 years. 

Those were some of the things I discussed in my thread about boot camp language learning where students could understand 98% of spoken Chinese in just 5 weeks. (play audio of that page to hear the actual students)
https://www.npr.org/2014/06/07/319805068...ssionaries

I think you would have to agree that the school way of teaching foreign language is deeply flawed.  Those classes should be 3 hours a day, not 1 hour a day.  And they should be breaking students up to practice speaking and hearing the language 1 on 1. Instead, they mainly teach students how to conjugate verbs and pass a multiple-choice test all of which is pretty useless in the real world.

[rachel83az]

I agree with LevelUP: fluency can mean a lot of things. One thing I now hate about American schooling is that it seems to push the idea that you're either fluent or you're not. I much prefer the CEFR way of looking at things: A1 to C2.

And it's definitely all about the vocabulary. If you can badly string together "My car is steal today!" then you're usually going to be more understood by natives than someone who knows how to conjugate "steal" properly, along with "drive", "walk", etc. but who doesn't know the words for "car" or "today".

Also, I look at such lists of "the easiest" languages with a grain of salt. The reasons for a language being "harder" or "more difficult" than another seem ambiguous at best. German is often ranked as being more difficult to learn than French. Personally, I don't find this to be the case. German is pretty easy and French is more difficult. Though I do know people who think that French is easy and German is hard. Danish can be even easier than German, once you get over the hurdle of pronunciation.

AFAIK, Romanian isn't an easy language. But it is a Romance language, so it'll probably be easier to learn than, say, a Slavic language like Russian or Czech.

[sanantone]

There's a difference between fluency levels and being considered fluent. While various systems may have different definitions for fluent, the word normally isn't used to describe someone who knows tourist phrases. Tourist-level knowledge is generally not enough for working a government job whether you're talking to the general public at home, foreign government officials, or performing clandestine operations. At the end of the day, it's irrelevant what random groups consider to be fluent. Employers care about whether you know enough to perform your job.

There are always individual exceptions, but the Foreign Language Institute collected data on average training times to get someone to working proficiency. They're not relying on anecdotes. In general, the Germanic languages and the Romance languages are easier for English speakers to learn. Some people might prefer the Romance languages because of familiar vocabulary while some may prefer the Germanic languages for similar grammatical structure. There's not a big difference between the 30 weeks suggested for French and 36 weeks suggested for German.

As explained by the Foreign Language Institute, one's ability to learn a language can vary based on prior linguistic experience and natural language ability. If your English vocabulary is limited, then you're probably going to struggle more with the Romance languages. If you sucked at English grammar, then you're probably going to struggle with the Germanic languages and possibly any other language that's more complex than English.

[bluebooger]

> Fluency means being able to speak the language at the level of a native speaker.

this ^

[rachel83az]

Fluency doesn't (just) mean being able to speak at the level of a native speaker. And thank goodness for that! If that were true, almost nobody would ever be able to attain fluency. That kind of magical speaking ability is actually relatively rare among polyglots.

[LevelUP]

If we use the dictionary definition of fluent, it means "capable of using a language easily and accurately." However, that definition is broad and not quantifiable.

Military students train at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center study for 10 hours a day.  It is an extreme boot camp-style learning environment.

Everyone has their own fluency goals, whether it's speaking as a tourist or having everyday conversations in social situations.

You already know 50% of the Spanish language without knowing any Spanish because many words are cognates.  For example, any Engish word that ends in "al" is spelled exactly the same in Spanish. Examples are canal, causal, animal, digital, ideal, hospital. 

Excluding cognates and other English-based words, you only need to know around 1000 Spanish words to get to a B1/B2 fluency. (conversation level)
Pimsleur uses a limited vocabulary of around 250 words, and their program is based on getting good at using a limited set of vocabulary.

That may seem like many words, but considering you can learn 25-50 words a day, it isn't that much.

[sanantone]

Some people have a tendency to overcomplicate things. This thread is about learning critical languages aka languages that are needed by the federal government and its contractors. Knowing how to ask where the beach is will not be enough for working proficiency. If you're interested in exploring Egypt without an interpreter, then this thread is not for you. Please stop throwing it off topic.