Linguistic Distance: A Quantitative Measure of the Distance Between English and Other Languages

TLDR

The authors introduce a quantitative “linguistic distance” metric that captures how difficult it is for Americans to learn other languages and can be extended to other language pairs. The metric is derived from Americans’ learning difficulty and applied to study how linguistic distance influences English proficiency among adult immigrants in the United States and Canada. Results show that, holding other factors constant, higher linguistic distance predicts lower English proficiency, and the metric can aid research, evaluation, and diagnostic work with linguistic minorities.

Abstract

This paper develops a scalar or quantitative measure of the ‘distance’ between English and a myriad of other (non-native American) languages. This measure is based on the difficulty Americans have learning other languages. The linguistic distance measure is then used in an analysis of the determinants of English language proficiency among adult immigrants in the USA and Canada. It is shown that, when other determinants of English language proficiency are the same, the greater the measure of linguistic distance, the poorer is the respondent's English language proficiency. This measure can be used in research, evaluation and practitioner analyses, and for diagnostic purposes regarding linguistic minorities in English-speaking countries. The methodology can also be applied to develop linguistic distance measures for other languages.