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.