The time it takes to learn a new language varies based on factors such as the language's difficulty, your learning style, and the amount of time you dedicate to studying
. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) categorizes languages by difficulty for English speakers, estimating the time required to achieve professional working proficiency
- Category 1: Languages closely related to English, such as Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Romanian, and Afrikaans, typically require around 575 hours (23 weeks)
- Category 2: Languages like German need approximately 600 hours (24 weeks)
- Category 3: Languages such as Indonesian, Swahili, and Malaysian usually take about 900 hours (36 weeks)
- Category 4: Languages including Polish, Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Croatian, Icelandic, Finnish, Latvian, Bulgarian, Persian (Farsi), Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese, generally require 1,100 hours (44 weeks)
- Category 5: Considered the most challenging for English speakers, languages like Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and Cantonese can take around 2,200 hours (88 weeks)
You can reach basic conversational skills in a language faster than full proficiency. The time it takes to reach different proficiency levels are:
- A1 Level: 60-80 hours of study
- A2 Level: An additional 80-100 hours of study after A1
- B1 Level: About 150-200 additional hours of study after A2
- B2 Level: Roughly 200-250 additional hours after B1
- C1 Level: Approximately 250-300 hours of study beyond the B2 level
- C2 Level: An additional 300-400 hours of dedicated study after C1
