Easiest Critical Languages to Learn

[jamshid666]

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.

Honestly, I think it's a bit "dangerous" and unhelpful to publish these kinds of lists. It gives the impression that you can put in a couple of years of halfhearted study into Romanian or Czech or whatever and get a job with the government. That's not happening. Learning a language is HARD and, even with extensive study, you may not reach any reasonable level of fluency in less than a decade. 

The DLI numbers (and others) are heavily skewed by selection bias. The people going through the program have already been chosen on the basis of their personal aptitude. They'll do better than the average person simply because of that. Then, when people NOT going through DLI don't reach any measurable degree of fluency in Spanish even after 200 hours of study, they'll be disappointed and quit. But maybe they'd have gotten there after 300 or 400 hours. 

Anyone CAN learn a language. Not everyone learns in the same way or at the same speed. Please don't pick your career path based on learning a specific language in a specific timeframe.

This is just anecdotal, but I wouldn't over inflate selection bias for the Foreign Service Institute figures. My parents were both in the Foreign Service and neither of them were particularly good at learning new languages. They both studied French prior to entering the Foreign Service, but neither of them used French while working there. My mom learned Spanish for the Foreign Service but failed her exam and had to repeat it before going on assignment to a Spanish-speaking country. My dad also did Spanish but struggled with it. Both of them studied Korean and passed, but they didn't learn fast and they weren't particularly good at it. Interestingly, my dad's strongest language was Japanese. But I don't think there is any way he or the Foreign Service would have known he had an aptitude for it until he started studying it.

In the foreign service, officers get assigned to new countries so frequently that having an aptitude in a particular language or language group provides minimal benefits. If they do come in with a particular aptitude, it's flexibility and a willingness to learn, which I think a lot of people on this forum have already.

Out of curiosity, what was your father's interest in Japanese versus Spanish or Korean. I believe that quite often interest can be just as large a factor as aptitude when it comes to learning a language.

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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.

Unless things have changed since I went there, we only sat in class 8 hours per day. How much a student studies after class varies from student to student. That said, my time at DLI was definitely one of the best times in my life, that was an awesome school to go to.