FSI’s English Speaker Language Difficulty
Category I
24-30 weeks (600-750 class hours)
Languages more similar to English
(24 weeks)
Norwegian 🇳🇴
Dutch 🇳🇱
Italian 🇮🇹
Romanian 🇷🇴
Danish 🇩🇰
Spanish 🇪🇸
Portuguese 🇵🇹 🇧🇷 🇦🇴 🇲🇿 🇸🇹
Swedish 🇸🇪
(30 weeks)
French 🇫🇷
Category II
Approximately 36 weeks (900 class hours)
Haitian Creole 🇭🇹
Swahili 🇹🇿 🇰🇪 🇷🇼 🇺🇬
Malay 🇲🇾 🇧🇳
Indonesian 🇮🇩
German 🇩🇪
Category III
Approximately 44 weeks (1100 class hours)
“Hard languages” – Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English. This list is not exhaustive.
Latvian 🇱🇻
Lithuanian 🇱🇹
Lao 🇱🇦
Macedonian 🇲🇰
Kyrgyz 🇰🇬
Mongolian 🇲🇳
Kurdish 🇮🇶
Nepali 🇳🇵
Khmer 🇰🇭
Polish 🇵🇱
Kazakh 🇰🇿
Russian 🇷🇺
Icelandic 🇮🇸
Serbo-Croatian 🇷🇸 🇭🇷 🇧🇦 🇲🇪 🇽🇰
Hungarian 🇭🇺
Sinhala 🇱🇰
Hindi 🇮🇳
Slovak 🇸🇰
Hebrew 🇮🇱
Slovenian 🇸🇮
Greek 🇬🇷
Somali 🇸🇴
Georgian 🇬🇪
Tagalog 🇵🇭
Finnish 🇫🇮
Tajiki 🇹🇯
Farsi 🇮🇷
Tamil 🇮🇳 🇱🇰
Estonian 🇪🇪
Telugu 🇮🇳
Dari 🇦🇫
Thai 🇹🇭
Czech 🇨🇿
Tibetan 🇨🇳
Burmese 🇲🇲
Turkish 🇹🇷
Bulgarian 🇧🇬
Turkmen 🇹🇲
Bengali 🇧🇩
Ukrainian 🇺🇦
Azerbaijani 🇦🇿
Urdu 🇵🇰 🇮🇳
Armenian 🇦🇲
Uzbek 🇺🇿
Amharic 🇪🇹
Vietnamese 🇻🇳
Albanian 🇦🇱
Category IV
88 weeks (2200 class hours)
“Super-hard languages” – Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers.
Chinese - Cantonese 🇨🇳
Chinese - Mandarin 🇨🇳
Japanese 🇯🇵
Korean 🇰🇷 🇰🇵
Arabic 🇸🇦 🇪🇬 🇦🇪