College of Humanities and Social Sciences: Foreign Languages & Literatures

Linguistics, Languages, and Literatures

Government agencies publish materials in a wide variety of languages and on learning other languages:

Japanese Calligraphy

Library of Congress

Foreign Language-Learning Materials: SI 1.114/2. – SI 114/3:J 27
- Adapting and writing language lessons
- Basic Courses for languages such as Cambodian, Cantonese, Dari, French, and many more
- Modern Writing in Arabic and other languages
Braille-Related Materials, LC 17.9:C 44+
Publications in other Languages: Search keyword “government documents” or “federal documents” and pick a language

Foreign Language Lesson Plans
Find lesson plans related to ancient languages, including Latin and Greek, as well as modern languages, including Spanish, French, Russian, and more.

Watching Subtitled Films Can Help Learning Foreign Languages

Language Timelines

From the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Studies (SLS).

Category I Languages: 24-30 weeks (600-750 class hours)

"World languages" - Languages more similar to English.

Danish (24 weeks)	Dutch (24 weeks)	French (30 weeks)
Italian (24 weeks)	Norwegian (24 weeks)	Portuguese (24 weeks)
Romanian (24 weeks)	Spanish (24 weeks)	Swedish (24 weeks)

Category II Languages: Approximately 36 weeks (900 class hours)

German	Haitian Creole	Indonesian
Malay	Swahili

Category III Languages: Approximately 44 weeks (1100 class hours)

"Hard languages" - Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English. This list is not exhaustive.

Albanian	Amharic	Armenian
Azerbaijani	Bengali	Bulgarian
Burmese	Czech	Dari
Estonian	Farsi	Finnish
Georgian	Greek	Hausa
Hebrew	Hindi	Hungarian
Icelandic	Kazakh	Khmer
Kurdish	Kyrgyz	Lao
Latvian	Lithuanian	Macedonian
Mongolian	Nepali	Polish
Russian	Serbo-Croatian	Sinhala
Slovak	Slovenian	Somali
Tagalog	Tajiki	Tamil
Telugu	Thai	Tibetan
Turkish	Turkmen	Ukrainian
Urdu	Uzbek	Vietnamese

Category IV Languages: 88 weeks (2200 class hours)

"Super-hard languages" - Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers.

Arabic	Chinese – Cantonese	Chinese – Mandarin
Japanese	Korean

Note: All estimates relating to the length of time needed to learn these languages to a Speaking 3/Reading 3 (S3/R3) proficiency level assume that the student is a native speaker of English with no prior knowledge of the language to be learned. It is also assumed that the student has above average aptitude for classroom learning of foreign languages; lower aptitude language learners will typically take longer. Although languages are grouped into general "categories" of difficulty for native English speakers, within each category some languages are more difficult than others.

Linguistics

American English Dialect Recordings: The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection
The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches

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They were drawn from various archives, and from the private collections of fifty collectors, including linguists, dialectologists, and folklorists. They were submitted to the Center for Applied Linguistics as part of a project entitled "A Survey and Collection of American English Dialect Recordings," which was funded by the Center for Applied Linguistics and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The collection includes recordings from forty-three states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and parts of Canada. They were made from 1941 to 1984, with the bulk being recorded between 1968 and 1982.