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.

Misc

Visualizing the Most Common Pets in the U.S.

Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!—these animals do not feature on this list of popular American household pets.

Published

1 day ago

April 27, 2024

Marcus Lu

A cropped chart showing the most popular pets in America by the number of households that own the pet.

Visualizing The Most Common Pets in the U.S.

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

In this graphic, we visualized the most common American household pets, based on 2023-2024 data from the American Pet Products Association (accessed via Forbes Advisor).

Figures represent the number of households that own each pet type, rather than the actual number of each animal. The “small animal” category includes hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, mice, rats, and ferrets.

What is the Most Popular American Household Pet?

Based on this data, dogs—one of the first domesticated animals—are the most common pets in the United States. In fact, around 65 million households own a dog, and spend an average of $900 a year on their care.

Rank	Species	Households
1	🐶 Dog	65M
2	🐱 Cat	47M
3	🐟 Freshwater Fish	11M
4	🐰 Small Animals	7M
5	🐦 Bird	6M
6	🦎 Reptile	6M
7	🐴 Horse	2M
8	🐠 Saltwater Fish	2M

Note: Households can own multiple pets, and are counted for all relevant categories.

Cats rank second, at 47 million households, and these smaller felines are a little less expensive to own at $700/year according to Forbes estimates.

But aside from these two juggernauts, there are plenty of other common pet types found in households across the country.

Freshwater fish can be found in 11 million households, along with small animals—rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs—in 7 million. Meanwhile, nearly 6 million homes have birds or reptiles.

Pet Ownership is on the Rise in America

Forbes found that 66% of all American households (numbering 87 million) own at least one pet, up from 56% in 1988. One third of these (29 million) own multiple pets.

A combination of factors is driving this increase: rising incomes, delayed childbirth, and of course the impact of the pandemic which nearly cleared out animal shelters across the globe.

America’s loneliness epidemic may also be a factor. Fledgling research has shown that single-individual households with pets recorded lower rates of loneliness during the pandemic than those without a pet.