Languages by Difficulty for English Speakers

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for a number of languages based on the length of time it takes to achieve Speaking 3: General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3) and Reading 3: General Professional Proficiency in Reading (R3). The list is limited to languages taught at the Foreign Service Institute. Below we have a table of these languages and their difficulty for English speakers. For more information on the FSI scale, known as the ILR Scale, go to the Interagency Language Roundtable site, for an overview of the history of the ILR Language Proficiency Skill level descriptions and scale information. We also have a page describing Language Proficiency Scales and Platiquemos Levels, which compares the proficiency achieved in completing any of the 8 levels of the Platiquemos Spanish Course with leves of the Interagency Roundtable Scale mentioned above, and the ACTFL scale developed by the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)