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How Long It Takes to Learn a Language, by the Numbers
What the FSI's 75-language difficulty list looks like when you line up the class hours, weeks and difficulty tiers side by side.
FSI languages
75
Difficulty tiers
4
Hardest tier hours
~2,200
Easiest tier hours
~600–750
Languages by FSI difficulty tier
| Tier | Languages | Canonical hours |
|---|---|---|
| Category I | 12 | ~600-750 hrs |
| Category II | 5 | ~900 hrs |
| Category III | 53 | ~1100 hrs |
| Category IV | 5 | ~2200 hrs |
Speaker counts, language-family and region data from Wikipedia (Ethnologue figures), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Frequently asked questions
How many languages does this cover?
75 languages the US State Dept FSI actually teaches and categorises, each with its FSI difficulty category, class hours and weeks to professional proficiency.
Are the hours exact?
They are the canonical FSI estimates, used verbatim — full-time classroom figures, not a casual self-study pace. We re-verify against state.gov on each publish pass.
Where do the speaker counts come from?
Native-speaker counts, language family and regions are from Wikipedia (Ethnologue figures), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; the FSI hours moat is independent of them.