>>7500900It's based on average time that the people they studied took to become proficient in 2012. Mind you:
>88 weeks means that the people they studied simply failed to become proficient before they stopped collecting dataThey didn't provide a sample size
They didn't clarify which resources were being used
They didn't define "proficient" and the standards for this will vary greatly between countries. The hardest part about learning chinese is the tonal inflections; these are absolutely necessary to speak and be understood in china, but not necessary to pass a proficiency test. You'll be "fluent" but nobody will understand your accent.
They didn't clarify the background of testers. I can't tell you as someone that works in data collection how often chinese-speakers lie about their language proficiency so they can breeze through chinese tests.
And context is important too. In formal setting, chinese is an "easy" language to learn because there are mountains of professional resources available, built up from decades of trade and commerce and immigration. Practically every postsecondary institution in the anglosphere offers chinese language courses taught by a fluent speaker. Access to these resources have far more of an impact than the actual difficulty of the language. Comparatively, the largest collection of quality japanese learning resources in existence is unironically the /djt/ pastebin--there's far less access to professional language resources and far fewer native-level speakers in the anglosphere looking to teach it or help you learn. These aren't really obstacles for someone learning online, but awareness of these resources and oppourtunities wouldn't be known to an institution like this that's just shitting out periodical junk data to collect their funding stipend.