Is Romanian hard to learn for English speakers?
Short answer: For a native English speaker, Romanian is rated Category I by the US State Department’s FSI, taking about 600-750 class hours to reach professional working proficiency. That measures distance from English — grammar, vocabulary and writing system — not how “hard” the language is in any absolute sense.
Category I — tier 1 of 4 by FSI class hours (~600-750 hrs, full-time classroom)
The Foreign Service Institute categorizes Romanian as a Category I language, indicating it requires approximately 600-750 hours of study for English speakers to reach professional working proficiency. This classification places Romanian among the easier languages for English learners, reflecting genuine structural similarities between the two languages despite their different origins.
Romanian's Latin alphabet presents no learning barrier, and its Romance language family background provides English speakers with substantial vocabulary overlap through shared etymological roots. While Romanian grammar includes some complexities absent from English—such as gendered nouns, case systems, and subjunctive mood—these features are neither unusually difficult nor insurmountable for motivated learners. The straightforward phonetic pronunciation and relatively regular verb conjugations further support learner progress. Overall, Romanian represents an accessible Romance language choice for English speakers willing to invest moderate study time.
What sets Romanian apart
Romanian is one of 12 languages in FSI’s Category I, at about 600-750 class hours. It keeps the Latin alphabet, shared with 34 other FSI-taught languages — no new script stands between you and the grammar and vocabulary work. It belongs to the Indo-European (Romance) family, alongside 6 other languages on the list.
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About Romanian
| Native speakers (L1) | 24.0M (source) |
|---|---|
| Language family | Indo-European (Romance) |
| Primary regions | Romania, Moldova |
| Writing system | Latin |
Speaker counts, language-family and region data from Wikipedia (Ethnologue figures), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Common questions
How hard is Romanian to learn for English speakers?
For a native English speaker, Romanian is rated Category I by the US State Department's FSI — about 600-750 class hours of full-time study to reach professional working proficiency. The rating measures distance from English, not absolute difficulty.
What makes Romanian easier or harder for English speakers?
The main factors are its Indo-European (Romance) roots and the Latin writing system — FSI's rating bundles grammar, vocabulary overlap and writing system into one estimate of study time.
Is Romanian one of the easier languages for English speakers?
In study time, yes: Romanian sits in Category I, the FSI tier with the lowest class-hour estimate (~600-750 hours) of the four tiers on the 75-language list.
Also curious about
More Category I languages — the same FSI difficulty tier.
Hours to learn Romanian → · How to approach it → · All 75 languages ranked by difficulty →
Hours and weeks are the canonical FSI figures for Category I, from the US State Dept FSI list (public domain), used verbatim and last verified June 2026. How we compile and re-verify this data.