For a native English speaker, the easiest languages to learn are those closely related to English, such as Spanish, Dutch, and Norwegian. The hardest are Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which take about three times as long to learn as the easiest group.
Have you ever wondered which languages are the easiest or the most difficult to learn, especially if your first language is English? If you want to study a second or third language, it is an important question.
Some people think that English is hard to learn. However, many other languages are much more difficult to understand and become fluent in. The groups below follow the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which trains American diplomats. It ranks languages by the weeks or class hours its English-speaking students need to reach professional working proficiency.
Keep in mind that these figures are estimates for full-time classes, and real learning times vary. Every person learns differently. Your motivation, the resources available to you, and the time you spend learning all play a part. And the closer a language is to your native language, the easier it is to pick up.
Easy languages to learn: category 1
These languages are the easiest because they are closely related to English. The FSI estimates 24 to 30 weeks of study, or about 600 to 750 class hours. French is at the top of that range.
| Language | Where it is mainly spoken |
|---|---|
| Danish | Denmark |
| Dutch | the Netherlands, Belgium |
| French | France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and many countries in Africa |
| Italian | Italy |
| Norwegian | Norway |
| Portuguese | Brazil, Portugal |
| Romanian | Romania, Moldova |
| Spanish | Spain, Mexico, and most of Central and South America |
| Swedish | Sweden |
Afrikaans, spoken in South Africa and Namibia, grew out of Dutch, and it is often counted among the easiest languages for English speakers as well.
German: category 2
German is closely related to English, but its grammar, with three genders and four cases, makes it harder to learn. The FSI puts it in a group with Haitian Creole, Indonesian, Malay, and Swahili, at about 36 weeks, or 900 class hours.
Harder languages to learn: category 3
These languages are very different from English. The FSI estimates about 44 weeks of study, or about 1,100 class hours. The group is large; here are some of its best-known languages.
| Language | Where it is mainly spoken |
|---|---|
| Finnish | Finland |
| Greek | Greece, Cyprus |
| Hebrew | Israel |
| Hindi | India |
| Polish | Poland |
| Russian | Russia and many neighboring countries |
| Serbian | Serbia |
| Thai | Thailand |
| Turkish | Turkey |
| Vietnamese | Vietnam |
The most difficult languages to learn: category 4
These languages have almost nothing in common with English, which makes them the most difficult for native English speakers. The FSI estimates about 88 weeks of study, or about 2,200 class hours: well over a year and a half of full-time classes.
| Language | Where it is mainly spoken |
|---|---|
| Arabic | the Middle East and North Africa |
| Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) | China, Taiwan, Singapore |
| Japanese | Japan |
| Korean | South Korea, North Korea |
Part of the difficulty is the writing. Chinese uses thousands of characters, and Japanese combines Chinese characters with two syllabic scripts of its own. Arabic has an alphabet, but it is written from right to left and usually without its short vowels. Korean has a simple alphabet, Hangul, but its grammar and vocabulary are very different from English.
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