How Difficult is it to Learn a New Language?


The short answer is: it depends on the language you choose and how close it is to your native language. Other factors are:

  • How complex is your new language?
  • How many hours a week can you devote to learning the language?
  • Your Motivation
  • Your language learning resources

Here’s a list of common languages that are easiest and hardest to learn for English speakers with the population of native speakers .

Easy – 23-24 weeks
575-600 class hours:
Spanish 329 million
Portuguese 178 million
French 67.8 million
Italian 61.7 million
Romanian 23.4 million
Dutch 21.7 million
Swedish 8.3 million
Afrikaans 4.9 million
Norwegian 4.6 million

Medium 44 weeks
1,110 class hours
Hindi 182 million
Russian 144 million
Vietnamese 68.6 million
Turkish 50.8 million
Polish 40 million
Thai 20.4 million
Serbian 16.4 million
Greek 13.1 million
Hebrew 5.3 million
Finnish 5 million
Hard – 88 weeks
2,200 class hours
Arabic 221 million
Chinese 1.2 billion
Japanese 122 million
Korean 66.3 million






At Luminoso Language Services we make learning Spanish and beginners Italian fun and easy. To get started, fill out our form. We look forward to hearing from you!

All data from U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Institute