Misc

Map: Language Difficulty Ranking For English Speakers

Published

6 years ago

December 15, 2017

Nick Routley

Language Difficulty Map

Language Difficulty Ranking For English Speakers

Learning a new language as an adult is big undertaking – so if you want the best value for your time, choose wisely.

For most people, there are no time constraints on becoming fluent in another language, but for the Foreign Service Institute – the U.S. government’s main provider of foreign affairs training – quantifying the “learn time” of various languages is vital. American diplomats, for example, need to become proficient in the official language of their posting country, and it helps immensely to know how long that might take.

The FSI organizes languages into five broad categories based on how different each language and culture is to the United States:

Category I: The Quick Ones

Category I languages are the easiest for English speakers, who can reach reading and speaking proficiency within about half a year of intense study. There is a mix Romance and Germanic languages in this classification, including Dutch, Swedish, French, Spanish, and Italian.

It might be surprising also to learn that Afrikaans is in this “easiest” category as well. It uses 26 letters in its alphabet like English (although it also contains additional phonetic sounds), and has a lot in common with modern Dutch.

Category II: Es ist schwer zu sagen

Though German is very closely related to English, there are grammar quirks that bump it up in difficulty. FSI estimates it would take 30 weeks of intense study to become proficient in German.

Category III: Intermediate

Category III languages are mainly spoken in Southeast Asia, and they include Indonesian and Malay. Swahili also counts as a Category III language. (Note: there are no Category III languages spoken in Europe.)

Category IV: For people who like a challenge

Category IV includes the most challenging European languages for English speakers to pick up. Here you’ll find Slavic and Baltic languages such as Polish, Croatian, and Latvian, as well as Greek, Turkish, and Icelandic.

This category also includes Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. These Uralic languages have the distinction of being particularly challenging for English speakers to master as they have little in common with any other European languages. FSI estimates it would take a year of intense study to become proficient in these languages.

Category V: For people who really like a challenge

Languages in category V are the most challenging for English speakers because they generally have completely unfamiliar scripts and cultural assumptions. These languages are most common in Asia and the Middle East.

While Mandarin, Arabic, and Korean are sufficiently difficult to comprehend, Japanese has a reputation for being the toughest in this group thanks, in part, to multiple writing styles.

Mastering Japanese could take years, but FSI estimates that it’ll be at least 88 weeks before you’re chatting your way through Tokyo.

べんきょうがんばってください。

This map was inspired by one created by Redditor, Fummy.

Maps

Mapped: How Much Does it Take to be the Top 1% in Each U.S. State?

An annual income anywhere between $360,000-$950,000 can grant entry into the top 1%—depending on where you live in America.

Published

2 days ago

September 25, 2023

Pallavi Rao

A cropped map of the U.S. listing the annual income needed to be in the top 1% in each state.

How Much Does it Take to be the Top 1% in Each U.S. State?

There’s an old saying: everyone thinks that they’re middle-class.

But how many people think, or know, that they really belong to the top 1% in the country?

Data from personal finance advisory services company, SmartAsset, reveals the annual income threshold at which a household can be considered part of the top 1% in their state.

Some states demand a much higher yearly earnings from their residents to be a part of the rarefied league, but which ones are they, and how much does one need to earn to make it to the very top echelon of income?

Ranking U.S. States By Income to Be in the Top 1%

At the top of the list, a household in Connecticut needs to earn nearly $953,000 annually to be part of the one-percenters. This is the highest minimum threshold across the country.

In the same region, Massachusetts requires a minimum annual earnings of $903,401 from its top 1% residents.

Here’s the list of all 50 U.S. states along with the annual income needed to be in the 1%.

Rank	State	Top 1% Income Threshold	Top 1% Tax Rate (% of annual income)
1	Connecticut	$952,902	28.40%
2	Massachusetts	$903,401	27.15%
3	California	$844,266	26.95%
4	New Jersey	$817,346	28.01%
5	Washington	$804,853	25.99%
6	New York	$776,662	28.29%
7	Colorado	$709,092	25.86%
8	Florida	$694,987	25.82%
9	Illinois	$660,810	26.35%
10	New Hampshire	$659,037	26.25%
11	Wyoming	$656,118	24.79%
12	Virginia	$643,848	26.11%
N/A	National Average	$652,657	N/A
13	Maryland	$633,333	25.94%
14	Texas	$631,849	25.83%
15	Utah	$630,544	23.77%
16	Minnesota	$626,451	25.53%
17	Nevada	$603,751	25.19%
18	South Dakota	$590,373	22.99%
19	Pennsylvania	$588,702	24.95%
20	North Dakota	$585,556	24.76%
21	Georgia	$585,397	25.06%
22	Oregon	$571,813	24.66%
23	Arizona	$564,031	25.22%
24	Idaho	$560,040	23.17%
25	North Carolina	$559,762	25.31%
26	Montana	$559,656	24.46%
27	Kansas	$554,912	25.03%
28	Rhode Island	$548,531	25.26%
29	Tennessee	$548,329	25.12%
30	Alaska	$542,824	25.38%
31	Nebraska	$535,651	24.10%
32	Delaware	$529,928	25.37%
33	Vermont	$518,039	23.63%
34	Wisconsin	$517,321	24.90%
35	South Carolina	$508,427	24.40%
36	Michigan	$504,671	25.01%
37	Maine	$502,605	24.04%
38	Missouri	$500,626	24.93%
39	Ohio	$500,253	25.09%
40	Hawaii	$495,263	24.12%
41	Iowa	$483,985	24.09%
42	Indiana	$473,685	24.55%
43	Alabama	$470,341	23.82%
44	Oklahoma	$460,172	23.68%
45	Louisiana	$458,269	24.80%
46	Arkansas	$450,700	21.11%
47	Kentucky	$445,294	24.14%
48	New Mexico	$411,395	23.35%
49	Mississippi	$381,919	23.04%
50	West Virginia	$367,582	23.26%
N/A	National Median Household Income	$75,000	N/A

California ($844,266), New Jersey ($817,346), and Washington ($804,853) round out the top five states with the highest minimum thresholds to make it to their exclusive rich club.

On the other end of the spectrum, the top one-percenters in West Virginia make a minimum of $367,582 a year, the lowest of all the states, and about one-third of the threshold in Connecticut. And just down southwest of the Mountain State, Mississippi’s one-percenters need to make at least $381,919 a year to qualify for the 1%.

A quick glance at the map above also reveals some regional insights.

The Northeast and West Coast, with their large urban and economic hubs, have higher income entry requirements for the top 1% than states in the American South.

This also correlates to the median income by state, a measure showing Massachusetts households make nearly $90,000 a year, compared to Mississippians who take home $49,000 annually.

How Much Do the Top 1% Pay in Taxes?

Meanwhile, if one does make it to the top 1% in states like Connecticut and Massachusetts, expect to pay more in taxes than other states, according to SmartAsset’s analysis.

A chart showing how states with the top highest and lowest average tax rates for their top 1% residents.

The one-percenters in the top five states pay, on average, between 26–28% of their income in tax, compared to those in the bottom five who pay between 21–23%.

And this pattern exists through the dataset, with higher top 1% income thresholds correlating with higher average tax rates for the wealthy.

State Ranks	Median Tax Rate
Top 10	26.65%
20-30	25.09%
30-40	24.65%
10-20	25.07%
40-50	23.75%

These higher tax rates point to attempts to reign in the increasing wealth disparity in the nation where the top 1% hold more than one-third of the country’s wealth, up from 27% in 1989.

Where Does This Data Come From?

Source: SmartAsset’s America’s Top 1% Is Different in Each State uses data from 2020 individual tax filings from the IRS, adjusted to 2023 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index.