The hardest languages to learn
Every ranking of this kind is somebody's opinion dressed as a fact. This one is a table of the US Foreign Service Institute's published class-hour figures, which is the closest thing to an objective answer that exists — and it still needs the caveats below to be useful.
So what is the hardest language to learn?
The published data refuses to pick one, and that is the honest answer. Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin all sit at 2,200 class hours — FSI does not separate them. The one distinction the data does support is that Japanese is additionally flagged as usually harder than the rest of that group, mostly because its writing system asks for three scripts at once and most of its characters carry several readings. Anyone naming a single winner is adding an opinion to the data.
| Language | FSI hours | Band |
|---|---|---|
| Arabic | 2200 | super hard |
| Cantonese | 2200 | super hard |
| Japanese | 2200 | super hard+ flagged harder |
| Korean | 2200 | super hard |
| Mandarin Chinese | 2200 | super hard |
| Czech | 1100 | hard |
| Finnish | 1100 | hard+ flagged harder |
| Greek | 1100 | hard |
| Hebrew | 1100 | hard |
| Hindi | 1100 | hard |
| Hungarian | 1100 | hard+ flagged harder |
| Persian | 1100 | hard |
| Polish | 1100 | hard |
| Russian | 1100 | hard |
| Tagalog | 1100 | hard |
| Thai | 1100 | hard+ flagged harder |
| Turkish | 1100 | hard |
| Ukrainian | 1100 | hard |
| Vietnamese | 1100 | hard+ flagged harder |
| German | 900 | moderate |
| Indonesian | 900 | moderate |
| Malay | 900 | moderate |
| Swahili | 900 | moderate |
| French | 750 | similar |
| Danish | 600 | similar |
| Dutch | 600 | similar |
| Italian | 600 | similar |
| Norwegian | 600 | similar |
| Portuguese | 600 | similar |
| Romanian | 600 | similar |
| Spanish | 600 | similar |
| Swedish | 600 | similar |
Linked languages have a full write-up of where the hours actually go. The rest are in the calculator.
The bands, and what they mean
| Band | Four-category | Five-category | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| similar | Category I | Category I | 600 |
| moderate | Category II | Category III | 900 |
| hard | Category III | Category IV | 1100 |
| super hard | Category IV | Category V | 2200 |
This ranking is not yours
FSI measured English speakers starting from nothing. If you already speak a second language, the order changes — sometimes drastically. A Portuguese speaker learning Spanish is doing a fraction of the work this table implies. A Japanese speaker learning Korean is doing about three quarters of it, despite Korean sitting in the hardest band.
The study method matters more than the ranking does. Thirty minutes a day on an app puts the easiest language on this list at over five years, which is longer than the hardest language takes with a tutor and real hours.
Common questions
- Hardest for whom?
- For English speakers. FSI measures how long its own students — native English speakers, studying full time — need to reach professional working proficiency. The ranking would look completely different for a Japanese speaker, for whom Korean is far easier than Spanish. Difficulty is a relationship between two languages, not a property of one.
- Does hardest mean impossible?
- No, and the framing does more harm than the hours do. Mandarin at 2,200 hours is about four times Spanish, not out of reach — that is roughly three years at two hours a day. The number that should change your plans is not the total but the ceiling on your study method: no amount of app time reaches C1 in any of these languages.
- Why do some lists say five categories and others say four?
- Both numbering schemes circulate for the same underlying data. The State Department currently publishes four categories, with Category IV as the super-hard group; older and community sources commonly use five, with Category V as super-hard. The class-hour figures are identical either way, which is why this site keys on hours and shows both labels.
- Is Arabic or Mandarin the hardest?
- FSI gives them the same figure — 2,200 hours — so the published data does not separate them. Japanese is the only language in that group FSI additionally flags as usually harder than the rest, which is the one distinction the data actually supports.
Once you have picked one
The hours tell you what a language costs. They do not tell you how to spend them, and the method you choose moves the total by more than the gap between two neighbouring difficulty bands.
- Run your own numbers — target level, method and languages you already speak, which between them change the answer by a factor of three.
- What to actually study with — every option we track, including the two that cost nothing and earn us nothing.
- Head-to-head comparisons — ten pairings people genuinely weigh against each other, each with a case for picking neither.
Hours are FSI's published figures for full-time classroom study. How we adjust them for the level you want and the way you actually study.