The Easiest Languages for English Speakers, by FSI Hours

If you want a straight answer to "what's the easiest language for an English speaker?", the best data comes from the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which has been teaching languages to English-speaking diplomats for decades and publishes how long each one takes. Its easiest group, Category I, has nine languages. Seven of them take 24 weeks of full-time training. French and Spanish take 30.

Below is the list with FSI's numbers, why these languages are quicker for English speakers, and what "easy" means once you turn the hours into a calendar.

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FSI Category I: the nine easiest languages

These are the figures on the State Department's language training page as of September 2026. They're for a native English speaker to reach professional working proficiency (a score of 3 in speaking and listening on the ILR scale).

FSI describes the group simply as languages "close to English". Every other language on its list takes longer: German and the rest of Category II about 36 weeks, Russian and the rest of Category III about 44, and Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Chinese 88. The full FSI language list has all of them in one table.

Why these languages are faster

FSI doesn't publish its reasoning language by language, but the pattern in Category I isn't mysterious. It's two families: the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian) and the Germanic languages of northwestern Europe (Dutch and the three Scandinavian languages). Both share a lot with English.

• Vocabulary you half-know already. English took a huge share of its vocabulary from French and Latin, so Romance languages are full of words you can guess: information, nation, possible. Dutch and the Scandinavian languages share the older Germanic core of English: everyday words like hand, water or house look and sound related.
• The same alphabet. No new script to learn, so you can read from day one and lean on written material from the start.
• Familiar grammar. Subject-verb-object word order most of the time, prepositions rather than postpositions, articles, tenses that map roughly onto English ones.
• No tones. Pitch doesn't change the meaning of a word the way it does in Mandarin or Vietnamese. (Swedish and Norwegian do have a word-pitch accent, but it distinguishes relatively few words.)

Which one is the very easiest?

On the current list it's a seven-way tie at 24 weeks. Older FSI data gives a finer grain. A 1993 FSI report by Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez and Stephanie Lindemann scored the speaking proficiency that English-speaking students of average ability reached after 24 weeks of training in each language. Economists Barry Chiswick and Paul Miller reproduced those scores as a measure of distance from English. In that data, Norwegian, Swedish and Romanian scored highest (3.00), Dutch next (2.75), French, Italian and Portuguese 2.50, and Spanish and Danish 2.25.

Treat that as a tiebreaker, not a ranking to argue about. It's one 30-year-old report, measuring speaking only, at one point in the course. The current list is the better guide for planning, and the differences inside Category I are small next to the gap between Category I and Category IV.

What "easy" means in hours

"Easiest" still means hundreds of hours. FSI's figures are class hours with a trained teacher in a small group, and FSI describes a typical week as 23 hours of class plus 17 of self-study. Count both and 24 weeks is 24 × 40 = 960 hours of effort; 30 weeks is 1,200.

For someone studying alone, the class hours are a sensible benchmark for a solid upper-intermediate level. Here's what they look like at a steady daily pace:

If your goal is conversational (B1), the rule of thumb this blog uses is about half the FSI hours: roughly 275–345 hours for a Category I language. That's a heuristic, not an FSI figure; our B1 hours guide explains where it comes from.

Calculator: your easy language, your pace

Pick a language and how much you can study a day. The calculator uses FSI's class hours, so the date is a benchmark, not a promise.

Easy isn't the only thing that matters

The easiest language is the one you'll keep studying. A Category I language you don't care about will lose to a Category III language you need for work or family, because motivation decides how many of those hours actually happen. Use the category to set expectations, not to pick for you. Our guide on how to choose your next language covers the other factors.

Two honourable mentions if you want something outside Europe: Indonesian and Malay use the Latin alphabet, have no tones, and verbs don't change for tense or person. FSI still puts them in Category II at 36 weeks, mostly because the vocabulary has little in common with English.

Track it so the estimate becomes yours

The FSI figure is an average for full-time students. Your pace will be different, faster if you already speak a related language, slower if most of your hours are app drills. The way to find out is to log your hours from the start and compare after the first 100 or 200. LangTrack keeps a running total per language and a daily goal, so the gap between your pace and the benchmark is always visible.

FAQ

What is the easiest language for English speakers to learn?

According to the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, the easiest are its Category I languages: Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian and Swedish at 24 weeks (552 class hours), and French and Spanish at 30 weeks (690 class hours). In older FSI speaking data from 1993, Norwegian, Swedish and Romanian scored highest after 24 weeks.

Is Spanish the easiest language for English speakers?

It's among the easiest, but FSI lists it at 30 weeks (690 class hours), a little longer than Italian, Portuguese or Dutch at 24 weeks (552 hours). Spanish is often recommended first because of how widely it's spoken and how many learning materials exist, not because it's the fastest.

Is German one of the easiest languages for English speakers?

Not by FSI's list. German is in Category II at about 36 weeks (828 class hours), alongside Haitian Creole, Indonesian, Malay and Swahili. Its case system, three genders and word order take longer than Dutch or the Scandinavian languages, even though it's closely related to English.

How many hours does it take to learn an easy language?

FSI's figure for its easiest group is 552 to 690 class hours to professional working proficiency, plus self-study. At one hour a day, that's about 18 to 23 months. For a conversational B1 level, plan for roughly half that, which is a rule of thumb rather than an official figure.

Related reading: FSI Language List: Hours to Learn Every Language · The Hardest Languages for English Speakers · How Long Does It Take to Learn Spanish?