By Felicity Duncan
I came across a fabulous chart yesterday showing how hard it is for English speakers to learn other languages. The chart ranks languages in five categories based on how long it takes for the average English speaker to learn them.
Included in Category One, taking around 24 weeks to learn, are Afrikaans, French, Norwegian, and Romanian. In Category Two, taking 30 weeks to learn, is German. In Category Three, taking 36 weeks to learn, are Indonesian, Malaysian, and Swahili. Included in Category Four, the largest category, and taking 44 weeks to learn, are Albania, Finnish, Hindi, Greek, Polish, Turkish, Xhosa, and Zulu. Finally, in Category Five and taking 88 weeks to learn, are Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean.
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Personally, I’m surprised at how quickly languages can be learned – it’s hard to imagine that I could be speaking Hindi after less than a year of study – but I also find it encouraging.
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