Re: New to the list (acquisition)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Vasiliy Chernov" <bc_@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 5:54 AM
Subject: Re: New to the list (acquisition)


> On Fri, 16 Jun 2000 00:35:33 -0400, Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:
> <...> langs.
> >with more complex phonologies (Russian I think, <...>
>
> Heh? But actually Russian phonology is so simple and natural - compared
> to English, at any rate ;D
I'd agree on the phonology, not the grammar though.

 <...>
> >Our esteemed State Department used to have a list that classified langs.
> >according to their difficulty.  The criteria were unstated, but you could
> >pretty well figure them out;
No, there were criteria. Basically the amount of time needed
to train a US Foreign Service Officer (who would also be
already minimally fluent in one language other than English)
to a level where he/she would be minimally fluent (3-level)
in both the spoken and written form of the new target language.

The evaluations of "difficulty" were based on test results
(oral and writing) with persons who had been so trained
by the Foreign Service Institute in the past  These results
ran into the thousands, of course. Taped oral results were
filed for comparison over the years. The length of courses
was adjusted to meet results.

There was no effort (or need) to evaluate the "intrinsic
difficulty" of languages for people around the world.  US
taxpayers, were not supporting that -- at least not via the
State Department.

>  very generally 1. similarity to Engl-- lots
> of
> >cognate forms, relatively familiar phonology-- the W.Eur. langs.  2.
> >non-similar either grammatically or phonologically, few cognates, but
> Latin
> >alphabet-- Albanian and Malay/Indonesian, Finnish, that I can recall.
> >3.  ditto but with non-Latin writing systems (but alphabetic)-- Russian
> and
> >other Cyrillic, Arabic, Indic langs.  4-- REALLY difficult writing
> systems,
> >Chinese and Japanese.    Strikes me they were more concerned that the
> >diplomats should be able to read the daily paper, than talk to the
> natives. <...>
The key result was the S-3 rating, that is the "minimal fluency"
necessary to work in the spoken language. Talking to people,
explaining things, hearing and understanding what they said
was key.

> Also, strikingly much concern about scripts and phonology...
None in any systematic form. But what may be shown is
that familiarity with a script speeds up (or doesn't delay)
the learning process.

Regards,                                        LEO
Leo J. Moser