Which numbering scheme is the official one?

The State Department’s own materials use four groupings. The five-tier version is a widely reproduced variant, not an error — it separates a small group into its own category. Neither is authoritative enough to make the other wrong, which is exactly why a category number alone is unusable and why everything on this site is keyed on hours instead.

What does the dot next to some languages mean?

FSI marks a handful of languages as usually harder than others in their band — Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Thai and Vietnamese among them — without publishing a separate hour figure for them. Our model applies an estimated 15% penalty to those, which is our coefficient and not a published one, and it is labelled as an estimate wherever it appears.

Why does the State Department publish this as an image?

We do not know, and it matters more than it sounds. Because the official chart is an image rather than structured data, every per-language assignment in circulation travels through third-party transcriptions, and errors propagate. Our table is reconciled against reproductions that agree with each other and with the official hour bands, which is the best available and is not the same as the primary source.

Tools

FSI category lookup

Every language FSI publishes a figure for, its class hours, and both category numbering schemes — because two incompatible ones are in circulation and a Roman numeral on its own does not tell you which.

600 class hours

Category I in the four-tier scheme · Category I in the five-tier scheme

900 class hours

Category II in the four-tier scheme · Category III in the five-tier scheme

1,100 class hours

Category III in the four-tier scheme · Category IV in the five-tier scheme

A dot marks a language FSI flags as usually harder than others in the same band. No separate hour figure is published for those, so ours applies an estimated penalty.

2,200 class hours

Category IV in the four-tier scheme · Category V in the five-tier scheme

A dot marks a language FSI flags as usually harder than others in the same band. No separate hour figure is published for those, so ours applies an estimated penalty.

Why two numbering schemes exist

The hour bands are stable; the numbering is not. The four-tier scheme places German at Category II. The five-tier scheme carves out a separate Category II for a small group, pushing German to III and everything below it down a number. So "Japanese is Category IV" and "Japanese is Category V" are the same claim in two vocabularies.

The practical rule: ask for the hours. A page quoting a category with no hour figure cannot be reconciled with any other page, and 600 / 900 / 1,100 / 2,200 are the quantities that actually mean something.

The longer version, including how this site got it wrong first.

Sources

Where this table comes from. The State Department publishes its category chart as an image, so per-language assignment comes from independent reproductions that agree with each other and with the official hour bands.

Foreign Language Training — US Department of State, Foreign Service Institute
The class-hour bands every estimate on this site starts from, and the definition of the proficiency they lead to (ILR Speaking-3 / Reading-3).
FSI Language Difficulty Ranking — fsi-language-courses.org
Which languages sit in which band. The State Department publishes the categories as an image, so per-language assignment comes from independent reproductions that agree with each other and with the official hour bands.

How this is worked out

This is a lookup rather than a calculation — nothing is personalised. It shows every language the Foreign Service Institute publishes a figure for, its class hours, and both category numbering schemes that circulate for those hours.

Both schemes appear because both are in use and neither is wrong. The four-tier version puts German at Category II; the five-tier version carves out a separate Category II and pushes German to III, moving everything below it down a number. A page quoting a Roman numeral with no hour figure cannot be reconciled with any other page.

It has no entry for languages FSI never taught

Navajo, Basque, Icelandic and many others have no published figure, because FSI teaches what its diplomats need. A list that includes them has switched sources without saying so, and this one returns nothing rather than filling the gap with somebody else’s estimate.

Every tool here can decline to answer, and that is the most useful thing they do.

Common questions

Which numbering scheme is the official one?: The State Department’s own materials use four groupings. The five-tier version is a widely reproduced variant, not an error — it separates a small group into its own category. Neither is authoritative enough to make the other wrong, which is exactly why a category number alone is unusable and why everything on this site is keyed on hours instead.
What does the dot next to some languages mean?: FSI marks a handful of languages as usually harder than others in their band — Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Thai and Vietnamese among them — without publishing a separate hour figure for them. Our model applies an estimated 15% penalty to those, which is our coefficient and not a published one, and it is labelled as an estimate wherever it appears.
Why does the State Department publish this as an image?: We do not know, and it matters more than it sounds. Because the official chart is an image rather than structured data, every per-language assignment in circulation travels through third-party transcriptions, and errors propagate. Our table is reconciled against reproductions that agree with each other and with the official hour bands, which is the best available and is not the same as the primary source.

Sources

Everything this tool rests on. The FSI baseline is published; the factors applied on top of it are ours and are marked as estimates.

Foreign Language Training — US Department of State, Foreign Service Institute
The class-hour bands every estimate on this site starts from, and the definition of the proficiency they lead to (ILR Speaking-3 / Reading-3).
FSI Language Difficulty Ranking — fsi-language-courses.org
Which languages sit in which band. The State Department publishes the categories as an image, so per-language assignment comes from independent reproductions that agree with each other and with the official hour bands.

This tool is free and carries no ads or affiliate links. It is funded by commission on some course links elsewhere on the site — which pages, and how that is kept out of the recommendations.

If you got something out of this and are not going to buy a course, you can buy me a coffee instead. Entirely optional, and it changes nothing about what the calculator tells you.