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 🇸🇦 🇪🇬 🇦🇪