Why can nobody say how long ASL takes?

Because no institution with the standing to measure it has. The Foreign Service Institute produces the class-hour figures used for spoken languages, and it does not teach ASL. ACTFL, which now assesses ASL proficiency through the AAPPL, describes what a signer can do rather than how long it took — as CEFR does, and deliberately. Absent either, the numbers in circulation come from individual schools and blog posts, and they do not agree.

Is ASL just English on the hands?

No, and this is the misconception that costs beginners the most time. American Sign Language is a full natural language with its own grammar, unrelated to English — different word order, spatial grammar that has no spoken equivalent, and non-manual markers where facial expression carries grammatical meaning rather than emotion. Signed Exact English is a separate system that does encode English; ASL is not it.

Does ASL work in Britain or Australia?

No. British Sign Language and Auslan are related to each other and unrelated to ASL, so an ASL signer and a BSL signer do not understand one another. ASL is more closely related to French Sign Language than to BSL, for historical reasons. Sign languages are not international, and the assumption that they are is common enough to be worth stating.

What does an ASL course level actually tell me?

Less than it appears to. Course numbering reflects the institution’s own sequence, and hours per course vary widely between programmes — one school’s ASL 3 is another’s ASL 1. Proficiency assessments exist for exactly this reason: they measure what you can do rather than what you have sat through.

How long does professional interpreting take?

Longer than fluency, and it is a separate skill. Interpreting requires certification through the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, and the usual route is a bachelor’s degree in interpretation on top of existing fluency — Gallaudet’s programme is a four-year format. Being a fluent signer and being a qualified interpreter are different things, and conflating them is the second most common misconception after the first one.

How long does it take to learn sign language (ASL)?

There is no authoritative figure, and this is the honest answer rather than a dodge. The Foreign Service Institute — the source of the hour counts for every other language on this site — does not teach ASL and publishes no number for it. ACTFL assesses ASL proficiency but deliberately says nothing about hours. Course lengths vary so much between institutions that a "Level 3" signer from one school and another are not comparable. Every page quoting you a specific number for ASL is citing nothing.

Every other page on this site opens with a number. This one cannot, and pretending otherwise would break the only rule that makes the rest of the site worth reading.

There is no authoritative figure for how long American Sign Language takes.

That is not a hedge. It is what the evidence shows, and the reason is specific.

Why the number does not exist

The hour counts everywhere else on this site come from the Foreign Service Institute — the US State Department's language school, which has trained diplomats since 1946 and publishes how many class hours its students need per language. It is the closest thing to an objective source that exists.

FSI does not teach ASL. It trains people for overseas postings. There is no FSI figure for American Sign Language and there never has been.

The obvious substitute would be a proficiency framework. ACTFL now assesses ASL through the AAPPL — the first ACTFL assessment to measure interpersonal interaction and receptive comprehension in a signed language. But ACTFL, like CEFR, describes what a learner can do. It makes no claim about how long getting there takes, and that omission is deliberate rather than an oversight.

What is left is course hours from individual institutions, and those do not compose into an answer. As Handspeak puts it plainly, the level of an ASL course does not reflect a signer's proficiency, because programmes differ in hours and content — one school's ASL 3 is another school's ASL 1.

So when a page tells you ASL takes a specific number of hours, it is not citing anything. Check.

What can honestly be said

It is a full language, not a code for English

The most expensive misconception, because it sets the wrong expectations from day one.

ASL has its own grammar, unrelated to English. Word order differs. Space is grammatical — you place referents in the signing space and point back at them, a mechanism spoken languages have no equivalent for. Facial expression is grammar, not emotion: eyebrow position marks question type, and mouth morphemes modify verbs.

Signed Exact English exists and does encode English word-for-word. ASL is not it, and learning materials that blur the two teach something that fluent signers do not use.

Practically: expect the difficulty profile of learning a language with unfamiliar grammar, not of learning a vocabulary list.

It is not international

British Sign Language and Auslan are related to each other and unrelated to ASL. An ASL signer and a BSL signer do not understand one another. ASL's closest relative is French Sign Language, for historical reasons.

If your reason for learning is a specific country or community, that decision comes before anything else.

Vocabulary is the beginning, not the middle

Individual signs are learnable quickly, and progress feels fast at first for the same reason it does with any vocabulary list. The grammar — spatial reference, classifiers, non-manual markers, verb inflection through movement — is where the real time goes, and it arrives after the encouraging part.

Fluency and interpreting are different goals

Professional interpreting is certified through the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, and the ordinary route is a bachelor's degree in interpretation on top of fluency you already have. Gallaudet's programme runs four years.

Being fluent and being a qualified interpreter are different achievements. Deciding which you want changes the answer to almost every other question.

What to do with that

The calculator on this site covers thirty languages and deliberately does not cover ASL — the model is built on FSI hours, and there are none. Adding a made-up baseline to make the tool feel complete would be the same thing the pages we are criticising do.

What you can do instead:

Assess rather than count. ACTFL's ASL AAPPL measures what you can actually do. That is a real answer to "how far have I got", which is the question the hour count was standing in for.
Discount course-level claims. "Completed ASL 4" means whatever the institution meant by it.
Get contact with Deaf signers early. Every experienced learner says some version of this, and it is the closest thing to a consensus that exists in a field with no consensus on hours.
Decide fluency or interpreting up front. They diverge early and expensively.

Why this page exists at all

Because "how long does it take to learn sign language" is asked constantly and answered dishonestly, and a site that publishes hour figures for thirty languages should be able to say when it does not have one.

If an authoritative figure appears — an FSI-equivalent programme, or an ACTFL study correlating hours to proficiency levels — this page will get a number, with the source next to it. Until then it has this.

Common questions

Why can nobody say how long ASL takes?: Because no institution with the standing to measure it has. The Foreign Service Institute produces the class-hour figures used for spoken languages, and it does not teach ASL. ACTFL, which now assesses ASL proficiency through the AAPPL, describes what a signer can do rather than how long it took — as CEFR does, and deliberately. Absent either, the numbers in circulation come from individual schools and blog posts, and they do not agree.
Is ASL just English on the hands?: No, and this is the misconception that costs beginners the most time. American Sign Language is a full natural language with its own grammar, unrelated to English — different word order, spatial grammar that has no spoken equivalent, and non-manual markers where facial expression carries grammatical meaning rather than emotion. Signed Exact English is a separate system that does encode English; ASL is not it.
Does ASL work in Britain or Australia?: No. British Sign Language and Auslan are related to each other and unrelated to ASL, so an ASL signer and a BSL signer do not understand one another. ASL is more closely related to French Sign Language than to BSL, for historical reasons. Sign languages are not international, and the assumption that they are is common enough to be worth stating.
What does an ASL course level actually tell me?: Less than it appears to. Course numbering reflects the institution’s own sequence, and hours per course vary widely between programmes — one school’s ASL 3 is another’s ASL 1. Proficiency assessments exist for exactly this reason: they measure what you can do rather than what you have sat through.
How long does professional interpreting take?: Longer than fluency, and it is a separate skill. Interpreting requires certification through the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, and the usual route is a bachelor’s degree in interpretation on top of existing fluency — Gallaudet’s programme is a four-year format. Being a fluent signer and being a qualified interpreter are different things, and conflating them is the second most common misconception after the first one.

Sources

FSI publishes no figure for this language. These are the frameworks that do exist, and the evidence that no hour standard does.

ASL AAPPL — ACTFL assessment for American Sign Language — Language Testing International / ACTFL
That ASL proficiency is measured against the ACTFL guidelines rather than by hours studied. This is the closest thing to a standard for ASL attainment, and it certifies performance — it publishes no hour figure at all.
ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines — American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
The proficiency scale ASL is assessed on. Like CEFR and unlike FSI, it describes what a learner can do and deliberately makes no claim about how long getting there takes.
ASL language proficiency levels — Handspeak
That the level of an ASL course does not indicate a signer's proficiency, because course hours and content vary between institutions — which is precisely why no single hour figure for ASL can be sourced.
Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf — RID
The certification path for professional ASL interpreting — the closest thing ASL has to a defined professional endpoint, reached through degree programmes and assessed performance rather than a stated number of study hours.

By Kevin Fan. Native Mandarin speaker who learned English as a second language — the same pairing this site prices at 2,200 hours, done from the far side. Builds and maintains the estimate model and every page on it. Last reviewed 2026-08-08. How we work these numbers out, including which coefficients are our own estimates.