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How hard is each language to learn?
A rough guide to how long the languages bleam supports take a native English speaker, grouped by the US Foreign Service Institute's difficulty categories. Hours are estimates to professional working proficiency — your mileage will vary, and reading every day moves you faster than any table can capture.
| Language | FSI category | Est. hours | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dutch | I — easiest | ~600–750 | The closest major language to English. |
| Spanish | I — easiest | ~600–750 | Phonetic spelling and many cognates. |
| Italian | I — easiest | ~600–750 | Regular grammar, very readable. |
| Portuguese | I — easiest | ~600–750 | Close to Spanish; Brazil and Portugal. |
| French | I — easiest | ~600–750 | Huge shared vocabulary with English. |
| German | II — moderate | ~750 | Germanic roots, but four grammatical cases. |
| Russian | III — hard | ~1,100 | Cyrillic alphabet and a rich case system. |
| Korean | IV — hardest | ~2,200 | Easy alphabet, very different grammar. |
| Japanese | IV — hardest | ~2,200 | Three scripts including thousands of kanji. |
| Mandarin | IV — hardest | ~2,200 | Characters and tones; simple grammar. |
Frequently asked
What is the hardest language to learn for English speakers?
The US Foreign Service Institute places Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic in its hardest category, estimating around 2,200 class hours to reach professional working proficiency. The difficulty comes mostly from unfamiliar writing systems and, for Mandarin, tones — not from the grammar.
What is the easiest language to learn for English speakers?
Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French are among the easiest, in the Foreign Service Institute's top category at roughly 600–750 class hours. They share alphabets and a great deal of vocabulary with English, so reading becomes useful quickly.
Does reading make a hard language easier?
Yes. Wide reading at a level just above your comfort — comprehensible input — is one of the best-evidenced ways to build vocabulary and grammatical intuition, and it works especially well for harder languages when each word has an instant lookup for meaning and pronunciation. That is exactly what bleam provides.
Pick one and start reading
Whichever category your language falls in, the fastest way through is time spent reading it. bleam brings real pages to your level so you can start today — free for 14 days, no card.
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