I don't think it's a coincidence at all. The closer a language and it's speakers are to English speakers the more likely those languages are to cross-pollinate, by sharing vocabulary, grammar, and culture. It makes sense that the closer someone is to you both culturally and geographically that the easier it is to speak their language, and understand their meaning.
Absent are Celtic languages, which have hardly any shared vocabulary with English, and completely different grammars (though lots of shared culture). Irish is listed as taking 1100 class hours to learn here:
The number of hours doesn't map directly to the FSI scale because the FSI scale is training Foreign Service Officers, who have undergone a rigorous selection process, and usually already speak multiple languages.
They are also learning full time at one of the best language schools in the world.
The average person taking average classes part time wouldn't learn nearly as quickly as they do.
the likelihood an american foreign service employee would ever need to use a celtic language is not very high. similar probably holds for basque which i hear is not the easiest to learn either.
Yes, poorly explained on my comment (not native english speaker, obviously). I just wanted to point out the region where basque is spoken. Thanks for the info.
