Comments on: Language difficulty rankings https://vividmaps.com/language-difficulty-rankings/ Maps that explain the World Mon, 04 May 2026 05:29:26 +0000 hourly 1 By: Chaplin https://vividmaps.com/language-difficulty-rankings/#comment-1531 Sat, 16 Dec 2017 13:44:02 +0000 https://vividmaps.com/2017/11/17/language-difficulty-rankings/#comment-1531 Category I languages are the easiest for English speakers, who can reach reading and speaking proficiency within about half a year of intense study. There is a mix Romance and Germanic languages in this classification, including Dutch, Swedish, French, Spanish, and Italian.

Though German is very closely related to English, there are grammar quirks that bump it up in difficulty. FSI estimates it would take 30 weeks of intense study to become proficient in German.

Category III languages are mainly spoken in Southeast Asia, and they include Indonesian and Malay. Swahili also counts as a Category III language.

Category IV includes the most challenging European languages for English speakers to pick up. Here you’ll find Slavic and Baltic languages such as Polish, Croatian, and Latvian, as well as Greek, Turkish, and Icelandic.

This category also includes Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. These Uralic languages have the distinction of being particularly challenging for English speakers to master as they have little in common with any other European languages. FSI estimates it would take a year of intense study to become proficient in these languages.

Languages in category V are the most challenging for English speakers because they generally have completely unfamiliar scripts and cultural assumptions. These languages are most common in Asia and the Middle East.

Source: http://www.visualcapitalist.com/language-difficulty-map/ https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f8bdbed300a8009626909cfac390818a5207a84725d352f9eed6f0451c8720a9.jpg

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