Reference
How long does it take to learn a language?
There is a real answer, from an institution that has been measuring it for decades. It is longer than the apps imply and shorter than it feels at month three.
The most useful numbers on this question come from the US Foreign Service Institute, which trains diplomats and has therefore needed, for decades, to predict how long a given language takes. Its estimates are widely quoted and widely misread.
Below are the categories and hours, what they actually measure, and — the part usually left out — what they come to at the pace a normal person can sustain.
The four categories
The FSI sorts languages by how far they sit from English, and assigns each group an expected number of class hours.
| Category | Hours | Full-time | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category I | ~600–750 | 24–30 weeks | Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Afrikaans |
| Category II | ~900 | ~36 weeks | German, Indonesian, Swahili, Haitian Creole |
| Category III | ~1,100 | ~44 weeks | Russian, Greek, Polish, Czech, Turkish, Hebrew, Persian, Vietnamese, Thai, Hindi, Tagalog |
| Category IV | ~2,200 | ~88 weeks | Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic |
Language lists are abbreviated; the FSI covers many more. Figures are commonly cited ranges and the institute has revised its groupings over the years, so treat them as well-founded approximations rather than constants.
What those hours actually buy
This is where most write-ups go wrong. The FSI target is not "can hold a conversation". It is Speaking-3 and Reading-3 on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale — roughly B2 to C1 in CEFR terms — meaning you can work professionally in the language, follow an argument, and read with reasonable ease.
The conditions matter too. An FSI week runs around 40 hours: roughly 23 in a class capped at six students with professional instructors, plus about 17 of directed self-study. That is close to ideal learning conditions and very little like an evening app habit.
The same hours, at a human pace
Divide the hours by what you can actually do daily and the picture changes considerably. These are straight arithmetic, assuming no days missed — which nobody manages.
| Target | At 30 min/day | At 1 hr/day | At 2 hr/day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 600 hours (Spanish, French) | 3 years 3 months | 1 year 8 months | 10 months |
| 900 hours (German) | 4 years 11 months | 2 years 6 months | 1 year 3 months |
| 1,100 hours (Russian) | 6 years | 3 years | 1 year 6 months |
| 2,200 hours (Japanese) | 12 years | 6 years | 3 years |
And self-study is generally less efficient hour-for-hour than small-group teaching, so treat these as floors rather than forecasts.
The point of the table is not to be discouraging. It is that "learn Japanese in three months" is arithmetically impossible at any sustainable pace, and knowing that up front is what stops people concluding they are bad at languages when they are merely on schedule.
What actually makes a language hard
The categories are not arbitrary. Four things drive most of the difference for an English speaker.
- Shared vocabulary. French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese share thousands of recognisable words with English, so you start with a substantial head start you did not earn.
- Writing system. A new script is a tax on everything. Japanese and Chinese sit in the hardest category largely because of it, and Russian's Cyrillic is a smaller version of the same cost.
- Grammar distance. Cases, aspect, and honorifics all demand rules English never taught you. German sits a category above the Romance languages largely on grammar, despite the familiar vocabulary.
- Sound system. Tones in Mandarin, consonants in Arabic, pitch accent in Japanese: distinctions your ears have spent a lifetime learning to ignore.
Korean is the instructive case. Its alphabet is famously learnable in an afternoon, and it is still Category IV, because script was never the main cost — grammar and honorifics are.
The good news the categories hide
Professional proficiency is not what most people want. Being able to have a conversation, follow a film, or manage a trip arrives far earlier, because everyday language leans on a small core of very common words — a point we went into in how many words you need to speak a language.
If you want to know what the intermediate milestones look like on the way, the CEFR levels map them out: we covered what each one means in CEFR levels explained.
The other thing the hour counts hide is that consistency beats intensity. Vocabulary decays in the gaps between sessions, so hours spread thinly across daily contact are worth more than the same hours in weekend blocks — the reason Glancealot puts words on your lock screen rather than asking for a study session. It will not move you through these categories on its own; it keeps the ground you have already taken.
Sources and caveats
Hour figures are the FSI's published estimates as commonly reported, checked in August 2026. They describe average outcomes for a selected, highly motivated cohort learning full time, and individual results vary with prior languages, aptitude, and exposure. Anyone quoting a single exact hour figure for a language is being more precise than the underlying data supports.
Frequently asked questions
The Foreign Service Institute puts Spanish in its easiest category for English speakers, at roughly 600 to 750 class hours to reach professional working proficiency. That figure assumes intensive full-time instruction with a teacher; at an hour a day of self-study it works out closer to two years, and conversational ability arrives well before that.
The FSI places Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic in its hardest category, at around 2,200 hours each — roughly three to four times what Spanish or French require. Writing systems account for much of the gap, along with grammar and sound systems that share little with English.
They measure the average time for a US diplomat to reach Speaking-3 and Reading-3 on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale, which is roughly B2 to C1 in CEFR terms. That is a high bar: comfortable professional use, not simply holding a conversation.
Not directly. They describe small-group instruction with professional teachers, around 23 hours of class plus 17 hours of self-study a week. Learning alone, without a teacher correcting you and without that intensity, generally takes longer than the raw hours suggest.
Much sooner than the FSI figures imply, because those describe professional proficiency. Conversational ability rests on a few thousand common words and the confidence to work around gaps, which for a Category I language can arrive within several months of consistent study.
It matters more than session length. The same total hours spread across daily contact beat the same hours in weekend blocks, because memory for vocabulary decays in the gaps. A shorter daily habit you keep will usually beat a longer one you abandon.
