These Are The Hardest Languages For English Speakers To Learn

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These Are The Hardest Languages For English Speakers To Learn For English speakers, learning Spanish or Italian can take less than a year. Reaching the same level of proficiency in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, or Arabic may require nearly four times as much study. This wide gap reflects how closely a language resembles English in its vocabulary, grammar, sounds, and writing system. This visualization, created by Julie R. Peasley via Visual Capitalist, ranks languages by difficulty using categories and study-time estimates from Effective Language Learning and Rosetta Stone , which reference Foreign Service Institute-style benchmarks . Which Languages Are Easiest to Learn for English Speakers? Languages are generally easier to learn when they share familiar grammar, vocabulary, sounds, or writing systems. That’s why many Category I languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish, are considered relatively approachable. The data table below shows the difficulty rankings and estimated learning time for 70 different languages: Language Category Time to learn 🇿🇦🇳🇦 Afrikaans I 24-30 weeks 🇩🇰 Danish I 24-30 weeks 🇳🇱🇧🇪 Dutch I 24-30 weeks 🇫🇷🇧🇪🇨🇭🇨🇦 French I 24-30 weeks 🇮🇹🇨🇭 Italian I 24-30 weeks 🇳🇴 Norwegian I 24-30 weeks 🇵🇹🇧🇷 Portuguese I 24-30 weeks 🇷🇴🇲🇩 Romanian I 24-30 weeks 🇪🇸🇲🇽🇦🇷 Spanish I 24-30 weeks 🇸🇪 Swedish I 24-30 weeks 🇩🇪🇦🇹🇨🇭 German II 36 weeks 🇭🇹 Haitian Creole II 36 weeks 🇮🇩 Indonesian II 36 weeks 🇲🇾🇧🇳 Malay II 36 weeks 🇹🇿🇰🇪 Swahili II 36 weeks 🇦🇱🇽🇰 Albanian III 44 weeks 🇪🇹 Amharic III 44 weeks 🇦🇲 Armenian III 44 weeks 🇦🇿 Azerbaijani III 44 weeks 🇧🇩🇮🇳 Bengali III 44 weeks 🇧🇬 Bulgarian III 44 weeks 🇲🇲 Burmese III 44 weeks 🇨🇿 Czech III 44 weeks 🇦🇫 Dari III 44 weeks 🇪🇪 Estonian III 44 weeks 🇮🇷 Farsi III 44 weeks 🇫🇮 Finnish III 44 weeks 🇬🇪 Georgian III 44 weeks 🇬🇷🇨🇾 Greek III 44 weeks 🇮🇱 Hebrew III 44 weeks 🇮🇳 Hindi III 44 weeks 🇭🇺 Hungarian III 44 weeks 🇮🇸 Icelandic III 44 weeks 🇰🇿 Kazakh III 44 weeks 🇰🇭 Khmer III 44 weeks Kurdish III 44 weeks 🇰🇬 Kyrgyz III 44 weeks 🇱🇦 Lao III 44 weeks 🇱🇻 Latvian III 44 weeks 🇱🇹 Lithuanian III 44 weeks 🇲🇰 Macedonian III 44 weeks 🇲🇳 Mongolian III 44 weeks 🇳🇵 Nepali III 44 weeks 🇦🇫🇵🇰 Pashto III 44 weeks 🇵🇱 Polish III 44 weeks 🇷🇺 Russian III 44 weeks 🇷🇸🇭🇷🇧🇦🇲🇪 Serbo-Croatian III 44 weeks 🇱🇰 Sinhala III 44 weeks 🇸🇰 Slovak III 44 weeks 🇸🇮 Slovenian III 44 weeks 🇸🇴 Somali III 44 weeks 🇮🇳 Telugu III 44 weeks Tibetan III 44 weeks 🇮🇳🇱🇰🇸🇬 Tamil III 44 weeks 🇹🇯 Tajiki III 44 weeks 🇵🇭 Tagalog III 44 weeks 🇹🇭 Thai III 44 weeks 🇹🇷🇨🇾 Turkish III 44 weeks 🇹🇲 Turkmen III 44 weeks 🇺🇦 Ukrainian III 44 weeks 🇵🇰🇮🇳 Urdu III 44 weeks 🇺🇿 Uzbek III 44 weeks 🇻🇳 Vietnamese III 44 weeks 🇿🇦 Xhosa III 44 weeks 🇿🇦 Zulu III 44 weeks 🇸🇦🇪🇬🇦🇪 Arabic IV 88 weeks 🇭🇰🇲🇴 Cantonese Chinese IV 88 weeks 🇨🇳🇹🇼🇸🇬 Mandarin Chinese IV 88 weeks 🇯🇵 Japanese IV 88 weeks 🇰🇷🇰🇵 Korean IV 88 weeks One of the most striking findings is the size of the gap between the easiest and hardest languages. While Spanish or French can often be learned in 24–30 weeks, mastering Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, or Arabic may require roughly 88 weeks of study. Many Category I languages use the Latin alphabet and share vocabulary roots with English through Germanic or Romance-language connections. This may also help explain why European languages often rank highly in language-learning apps and why Duolingo’s most popular languages globally include several widely taught European options. What Makes a Language Harder to Learn? Category III languages tend to have greater linguistic distance from English. This can include unfamiliar grammar structures, new alphabets, or pronunciation patterns that require more time to master. For example, languages like Russian, Greek, Hindi, Turkish, and Vietnamese all fall into this category. Some use different scripts, while others introduce grammatical systems that are less intuitive for native English speakers. The “Super-Hard” Languages Category IV languages are considered exceptionally difficult for English speakers. This group includes Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. Many of these languages present multiple learning hurdles simultaneously. Mandarin and Cantonese require mastery of tones, Japanese combines several writing systems, Korean introduces a unique alphabet and grammar structure, and Arabic uses an entirely different script. Together, these differences significantly increase the time needed to reach professional proficiency. To learn more about language use across the U.S., check out Mapped: America’s Most-Spoken Languages After English and Spanish on the Voronoi app. Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 23:00