The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has created a list (based on their experience training US diplomats) to show the approximate time needed to learn a specific language as an English speaker.
This is the number of weeks of study time to reach General Proficiency in Speaking (S3) and Reading (R3).
Full detailed list follows after the map: (the article continues after the ad)
CATEGORY I: 23-24 WEEKS (575-600 HOURS)
- Afrikaans
- Danish
- Dutch
- French
- Italian
- Norwegian
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Spanish
- Swedish
CATEGORY II: 30 WEEKS (750 HOURS)
- German
CATEGORY III: 36 WEEKS (900 HOURS)
- Indonesian
- Malaysian
- Swahili
CATEGORY IV: 44 WEEKS (1100 HOURS)
- Albanian
- Amharic
- Armenian
- Azerbaijani
- Bengali
- Bosnian
- Bulgarian
- Burmese
- Croatian
- Czech
- Estonian
- Finnish
- Georgian
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Icelandic
- Khmer
- Lao
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Macedonian
- Mongolian
- Nepali
- Pashto
- Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik)
- Polish
- Russian
- Serbian
- Sinhala
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Tagalog
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Urdu
- Uzbek
- Vietnamese
- Xhosa
- Zulu
CATEGORY V: 88 WEEKS (2200 HOURS)
- Arabic
- Cantonese (Chinese)
- Mandarin (Chinese)
- Japanese
- Korean
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Sources: FOREIGN SERVICE INSTITUTE LANGUAGE DIFFICULTY RANKINGS