Difficult and Easy Languages

It’s obvious that some languages are easier to learn than others. A lot depends from which language you’re beginning and which is the language you’re learning. For Americans, Romance languages and many other European languages are “easy” to learn. French, Spanish, Italian, German, Swedish, etc. are ranked as category 1, according to the US State Department. Hungarian is placed in Category 2, along with 30 others including Russian, Greek and Thai. Arabic, Cantonese and Japanese were in Category 3, the toughest. The categories are based on how long it takes an average student at the Foreign Service Institute to reach proficiency in the language. To reach level 2+, minimal professional competency, takes about 700 hours of instruction for a category 1 languages. Category 3 takes three times as long.