The hardest languages to learn according to the FSI
The top 3 according to 0 votes from people: Arabic · Mandarin Chinese · Cantonese. (Updated Jul 10, 2026.)
The US Foreign Service Institute groups languages by how many hours of study an English-speaking diplomat needs. Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are Category IV, and Polish is Category III. Which one do you think is the hardest?
Automatically translated (original in Polski). See the original
Top 19
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1
Arabic
Category IV: about 88 weeks of study.
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2
Mandarin Chinese
Category IV: tones and thousands of characters.
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3
Cantonese
Category IV: even more tones than Mandarin.
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4
Japanese
Category IV: three writing systems.
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5
Korean
Category IV: a simple script but a difficult grammar.
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6
Russian
Category III: about 44 weeks.
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7
Polish
Category III: seven cases and lots of consonants.
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8
Czech
Category III.
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9
Greek
Category III.
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10
Turkish
Category III: an agglutinative language.
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11
Vietnamese
Category III: six tones.
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12
Thai
Category III: tones and its own script.
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13
Hindi
Category III.
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14
Hebrew
Category III.
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15
Persian
Category III.
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16
Tagalog
Category III.
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17
Finnish
Category III: fifteen cases.
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18
Hungarian
Category III.
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19
Estonian
Category III.
How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.
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