How Long Does It Take to Learn French?

For a native English speaker, the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI) estimates 30 weeks of full-time study, or about 690 class hours, to reach professional working proficiency in French. That's the same as Spanish, and at an hour a day it comes to just under two years. France's own exam framework gives hour ranges for each CEFR level, which are more useful for planning a first goal. Here are both.

On this page

The FSI figure

The State Department's Foreign Language Training page puts French in Category I, "languages close to English", at 30 weeks; Italian, Portuguese and the other Category I languages are 24. The target is an integrated 3 in speaking and listening on the ILR scale, usually read as upper B2 to C1 (there's no official conversion; see FSI hours vs CEFR levels).

Two caveats: these are class hours, and FSI's students also do about 17 hours of self-study a week on top of 23 hours of class, so total effort is closer to 30 × 40 = 1,200 hours. And they're full-time students with trained teachers. The Defense Language Institute, the U.S. military's language school, runs French as a 36-week course, the same as Spanish.

Hours per CEFR level

The DELF and DALF diplomas, France's official certificates for learners of French, map onto the CEFR. Campus France, the French government agency for international students, lists indicative learning hours for each level, cumulative from zero:

These line up well with FSI: 690 class hours, read as upper B2 to C1, falls between the B2 and C1 ranges here. They also match this blog's rule of thumb that B1 takes about half the FSI hours (345 for French). Treat them as guided learning hours; a self-learner usually needs at least as many.

How long that takes at your pace

For a pace that isn't in the table, the calculator below works it out from any daily time, level goal and hours already done. It covers every language on the FSI list on our language hours page too.

What's easy and hard about French

Easy: vocabulary. After the Norman Conquest, English absorbed a huge amount of French, so a large share of formal English vocabulary has a French relative: government/gouvernement, information, possible, restaurant. Reading French comes quickly for English speakers, often well ahead of speaking.

Hard:

• Pronunciation and listening. French spelling has many silent letters, and words run together in speech (liaison and elision), so what you hear often doesn't look like what you read. Nasal vowels and the French r take practice. Listening is the skill that lags longest for most learners.
• Gender and agreement. Every noun is masculine or feminine, and articles, adjectives and some past participles agree with it.
• Verbs. Many common verbs are irregular, and there's a subjunctive and a set of past tenses to keep apart.
• Spoken vs written French. Everyday speech drops parts of the written grammar (je sais pas for je ne sais pas), so you need exposure to both.

Those are probably part of why FSI gives French and Spanish 30 weeks rather than 24, though FSI doesn't say why.

Planning by goal

• Travel and basic conversation: A2, about 150–200 hours.
• Residency or citizenship: France's requirements depend on the permit; our post on French level for residency and citizenship has the current rules and hours.
• University or professional work: B2 or C1, roughly 550–950 hours. The DELF B2 guide breaks that exam down.

Track it

The fastest way to know whether these ranges fit you is to log your hours and test yourself every couple of hundred. Because listening is French's usual bottleneck, log it as its own activity. LangTrack shows your running total and how it splits by activity, so you'll see early if you're reading a lot and listening very little. Our French tracking guide covers what else to measure.

FAQ

How many hours does it take to learn French?

FSI estimates about 690 class hours (30 weeks full time) for a native English speaker to reach professional working proficiency. Campus France's indicative hours for the DELF/DALF put B1 at 350–400 hours, B2 at 550–650 and C1 at 800–950.

Is French harder than Spanish?

FSI gives both the same 30 weeks, or 690 class hours. French vocabulary is more familiar to English speakers; Spanish pronunciation and spelling are easier. Most learners find French listening the harder part.

Can you learn French in a year?

To B1, yes, with about an hour a day: 350–400 hours is roughly a year. B2 in a year would take closer to two hours a day.

Related reading: FSI Language List: Hours to Learn Every Language · How Long Does It Take to Learn Spanish? · French Level for Residency and Citizenship · DELF B2 Preparation Guide