Language Difficulty¶

Language learning requires vastly different amounts of time depending on how closely a language relates to English. The rankings below are based on data from the US Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which estimated the hours needed for native English speakers to reach professional proficiency.

Here is an overview:

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

“World Languages” closely cognate with English

Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish

Category II: 36 weeks (900 hours)¶

Languages that take a little longer to master than Category I languages.

German, Haitian Creole, Indonesian, Malay, and Swahili

Category III: 44 weeks (1100 hours)¶

Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English

Albanian, Bengali, Burmese, Czech, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Macedonian, Mongolian, Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik), Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese

Category IV: 88 weeks (2200 hours)¶

Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers

Arabic, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Japanese, and Korean

The document also includes estimates for conversion courses like Spanish-Portuguese (14-18 weeks) and Malay-Indonesian (10-12 weeks).