What are Category 1 languages?
What are Category 1 languages?
Category 1 languages are those Western European languages that are most cognate with English and that are most typologically similar to it. For instance, Dutch, Afrikaans, Spanish, and Italian belong to Category 1.
How many languages do foreign service officers learn?
The Foreign Service Institute trains diplomats in more than 80 different language and walking through the halls can feel like a whirlwind global tour.
What are Category 2 languages?
Language categories
- Category I language: 95 or higher (French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish)
- Category II language: 100 or higher (German, Indonesian)
- Category III language: 105 or higher (Hebrew, Hindi, Iranian Persian, Dari Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Uzbek, and Urdu)
What is a Category 3 language?
Category III Languages: Approximately 44 weeks (1100 class hours) “Hard languages” – Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English.
Is Russian a category 4 language?
The darkest countries on the map represent Category 4 languages, those that take the longest for Americans to learn: Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. After that are 50 merely “hard” Category-3 languages, including Czech, Hindi, Russian, and Thai.
Do foreign service officers need to speak another language?
Myth 1: You are required to speak multiple languages All you have to know is English, which is a significant component of the FSOT. Most Officers do speak multiple languages. But many of them, if not all, receive training on the required language of their post before moving to their assigned country.
How do foreign service officers learn languages?
Diplomats attend the training facility to learn through instruction, but there’s also a lot of self-study that takes place during their courses. To complete this additional self-study in their own time, they use language modules designed for solo learning.
Is German a Category 2 language?
German is the only ‘Category II’ language in the FSI ranking; Indonesian, Malaysian and Swahili are the only three ‘Category III’ languages. Hebrew, Hindi and Burmese are some examples of non-European ‘Category IV’ languages. Mongolian, Thai and Vietnamese are ‘Category IV*’.
What does the Foreign Service Institute difficulty rankings mean?
The Foreign Service Institute language difficulty rankings are an indication of how long a native English speaker would need to reach proficiency in a number of different languages.
How many languages can you learn at FSI?
Foreign Language Training FSI’s School of Language Studies (SLS) offers instruction in over 65 languages, with course length and curricula targeted at a range of language proficiency, from survival to advanced language skills, to enhance the foreign affairs community’s ability to work and live abroad effectively.
Which is the best free foreign service courses?
FSI Language Courses. The FSI (Foreign Service Institute) language courses are arguably the best free language courses available anywhere. The FSI language courses cover over 40 languages from the most spoken in the world to some less well known ones. Some of the language learning material is a bit dated, but it is still possible for someone to
What is the mission of the Foreign Service Institute?
The mission of the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is to deliver world-class diplomatic training and provide the career-long learning opportunities that U.S. government foreign affairs professionals need in order to excel in today’s global arena, advance U.S. foreign policy and deliver on behalf of the American people.