This Is How Long It Takes to Learn a Foreign Language, According to the U.S. Institute That Trains Diplomats
Spoiler alert: Swedish is considered one of the easiest languages for native English speakers.
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Learning a second language can enrich your life in so many ways — from the ability to communicate with millions of people in their native language and read books and magazines in that tongue to boosting your brain's functions. So, how much time do you need to invest to become fluent in a different language? According to the U.S. Department of State, the short answer is, well, it depends on the language.
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which is part of the U.S. State Department and is responsible for educating diplomats, divides the world's most popular languages into four categories based on the number of weeks it takes to gain general proficiency, reports The Economist.
Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Romanian take, on average, 24 weeks or around 600 class hours to learn, while French takes 30 weeks. These are the languages that the FSI deems "similar to English," as they all use the Latin alphabet in various forms.
The second category includes German, Swahili, and Indonesian, which take 36 weeks or 900 class hours — or 25 hours per week.
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The Economist points out that most European languages have originated from the Proto-Indo-European language, so certain words have the same root.
In the third category are the "languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English." Those include Bengali, Greek, Turkish, Icelandic, and Thai — and they take approximately 44 weeks or 1,100 class hours to learn.
Arabic, Chinese Cantonese, Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean are the only languages listed in the fourth category of languages of exceptional difficulty for native English speakers. Prepare to spend about 88 weeks on average to learn each of these. These languages differ from English in writing, sentence structure, syntax, and more.
The FSI's scale defines general proficiency as having complete control of basic grammar, expressing opinions, making appropriate cultural references, and having a broad vocabulary.
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