Relative difficulty of various languages
for English speakers in
programs of the Foreign Service Institute

 
Language Groups
(by relative difficulty)		 . Class time required 
for average student 
to reach Level 2+
(almost working 
professional 
proficiency)
Group I Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, 
French, Haitian Creole, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, 
Swahili		 24 weeks*
(720 hours:
30 hours/week
for 6 months)
Group II Bulgarian, 
Dari, Farsi, 
Greek, 
Hindi, Urdu, 
Indonesian, Malay		 38 weeks*
(1140 hours:
30 hours/week
for 9 months)
Group III Amharic, Hebrew,
Czech, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian,
Pilipino,
Bengali, Nepali, Sinhala, Tamil,
Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish,
Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Thai, Vietnamese		 44 weeks*
(1320 hours:
30 hours/week
for 11 months)
Group IV Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean 65 weeks*
(1950 hours:
30 hours/week
for 15 months)
*each week consists of five 6 hour days of intensive training