“Which language should I learn?” is asked dozens of times a day on every language forum. The usual answers are “whatever you are drawn to” (true, not actionable) or rankings that never explain what “difficulty” means.
This guide adds what most ignore: reading difficulty. If you learn through books, how easy a language is to read matters at least as much as how easy it is to speak, and the two rankings differ.
How Language Difficulty Is Measured
The FSI Classification System
The most cited framework comes from the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which has trained American diplomats in foreign languages since 1947. From decades of classroom data, FSI groups languages by the hours an English-speaking adult needs to reach “professional working proficiency” (ILR Level 3, roughly B2/C1 on the European scale).
| Category | Hours | Weeks (full-time) | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | 600-750 | 24-30 | Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Romanian |
| II | 900 | 36 | German, Indonesian, Malay, Swahili |
| III | 1,100 | 44 | Russian, Polish, Czech, Greek, Hindi, Thai, Turkish, Hebrew, Finnish, Hungarian |
| IV | 2,200 | 88 | Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese, Korean |
Why FSI Numbers Are Imperfect
- They assume full-time immersive study: 25+ hours a week in small classes with native instructors, plus homework and language lab. An hour a day does not simply scale the numbers; the learning curve is different.
- They measure diplomatic proficiency, enough to negotiate treaties and analyze policy documents. Reading novels, ordering food or basic conversation take far fewer hours.
- They assume a monolingual English speaker. A Spanish speaker learning Italian might need a third of the hours.
- They lump skills together. Comfortable reading often comes long before fluent conversation.
Still, FSI is the best available benchmark, and its order matches experience: Spanish is easier than Russian, Russian easier than Japanese.
The Reading Difficulty Angle
Most guides focus on speaking and listening. For learners who read as their main method (research strongly supports reading as one of the most effective approaches), the question is how hard is it to read this language? Three factors decide it, partly independent of overall difficulty.
Orthographic Transparency
Languages range from “transparent” (spelling matches pronunciation consistently) to “opaque.”
Transparent orthographies (Spanish, Italian, Finnish, Turkish) let you pronounce any word you see and spell any word you hear, so visual and auditory memory reinforce each other.
Opaque orthographies break that link: French has extensive silent letters (“beaucoup” has eight letters but four sounds), and English is notorious (“through,” “though,” “thought,” “thorough”). For reading this matters less than you might think: you understand a word without pronouncing it, and French cognates still give an English speaker the meaning.
Script Familiarity
The writing system is the most immediate barrier.
- Latin alphabet languages (Spanish, German, Turkish, Vietnamese): you can decode words on day one, an enormous head start.
- Modified Latin alphabets (Russian’s Cyrillic, Greek, Georgian): new symbols that map to sounds fairly simply. Most learners read Cyrillic or Greek letters within a few days of focused study.
- Non-alphabetic systems (Chinese characters, Japanese kanji): you cannot “sound out” an unfamiliar character; each is learned individually. Newspaper reading takes 2,000+ kanji in Japanese and 3,000+ characters in Chinese, a multi-year investment.
- Abjads and abugidas (Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Thai) fall in between. Arabic and Hebrew omit most vowels in standard writing, so readers infer pronunciation from context. Hindi’s Devanagari is phonetic once learned, which takes several weeks.
Grammar Complexity for Comprehension
- Case systems (Russian, German, Polish) are demanding to produce, but for a reader they say who does what to whom even with flexible word order. Complex sentences can be easier to parse than in English.
- Verb conjugation likewise encodes person, tense and mood that help you understand without mastering the system.
- Agglutination (Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian) packs several grammatical meanings into long words. They are harder to look up, but the system is highly regular, so you can decompose unfamiliar words logically.
- Topic-comment structure (Japanese, Korean, Chinese) organizes sentences very differently from English and takes time to internalize.
Language-by-Language Comparison
Romance Languages (FSI Category I: 600-750 Hours)
The closest major family to English: the Norman Conquest flooded English with French vocabulary, and French descends from Latin with the rest of the group. For a reading-focused comparison, see our Romance vs Germanic comparison.
Spanish
FSI estimate: 600-750 hours | Reading difficulty: LOW
The most transparent spelling of any major world language: five vowel sounds, consistent consonants, predictable stress (marked with accents when it breaks the pattern). Cognates are dense, since Spanish and English both drew on Latin and Greek: “El presidente de la nación confirmó la información oficial” needs no translation. Gendered nouns, the subjunctive and two “to be” verbs follow regular patterns, in familiar subject-verb-object order.
Content library: Massive, from Cervantes to García Márquez to contemporary bestsellers, plus abundant news and online content.
The honest assessment: Spanish is the default recommendation: the easiest major language to read, the most content, the clearest practical benefits (500 million speakers, dominant in the Americas). With no strong preference, it is the safest bet.
French
FSI estimate: 600-750 hours | Reading difficulty: LOW-MEDIUM
An estimated 30 to 45 percent of English words have French origins, more than Spanish shares. With “gouvernement,” “important,” “différence” and “conversation” on the page, an English speaker often gets the gist of a news article with zero study. Pronunciation is the complication (silent letters, nasal vowels, liaison): “Ils ont” (they have) is seven letters, two syllables. Reading and listening become almost separate skills, so reading can advance fast while listening lags.
Content library: One of the richest: Hugo, Camus, Proust, a thriving contemporary scene, and more books per capita than almost any other country.
The honest assessment: French is slightly harder to read than Spanish because of spelling, but cognates partly compensate. For literature lovers it opens one of the deepest catalogs in existence.
Italian
FSI estimate: 600-750 hours | Reading difficulty: LOW
Maybe the most phonetically transparent major Romance language: almost every letter pronounced, fairly predictable stress, a simple vowel system. Grammar is close to Spanish, with reliable gender and number endings. Fewer direct cognates than French, but Latin roots show: “università,” “impossibile,” “comunicazione.”
Content library: Smaller than French or Spanish but deep (Dante, Calvino, Eco, Ferrante), with much contemporary work never translated into English.
The honest assessment: Phonetically one of the easiest to read, with a smaller content ecosystem and fewer career uses than Spanish or French. If you love the language and culture, that does not matter.
Portuguese
FSI estimate: 600-750 hours | Reading difficulty: LOW-MEDIUM
Roughly 90 percent lexical similarity with Spanish and nearly identical grammar. It diverges in sound: Brazilian Portuguese has nasal vowels, vowel reduction and its own rhythm, and European Portuguese, with consonant clusters and swallowed vowels, is called “the Russian of Romance languages.” On the page it is easy: mostly phonetic (more than French, less than Spanish), with dense cognates.
Content library: Strong and growing. Brazilian literature (Machado de Assis, Clarice Lispector, Paulo Coelho) is internationally recognized, and Brazil’s 210 million people ensure abundant modern content.
The honest assessment: The obvious next step after Spanish, readable within weeks. As a first language, slightly harder than Spanish because of pronunciation.
Romanian
FSI estimate: 600-750 hours | Reading difficulty: MEDIUM
The Romance outlier, shaped by Slavic, Turkish and Hungarian neighbors. It keeps cases (nominative/accusative and genitive/dative), attaches articles to the end of nouns, and mixes Latin roots (“important,” “național,” “problema”) with Slavic and Turkish words. Spelling is phonetic (Latin alphabet plus a few characters); grammar takes more effort than in other Romance languages.
Content library: Modest, with notable authors (Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Herta Müller) and online content growing with Romania’s tech sector.
The honest assessment: The hardest Romance language for English speakers, still easier than any Slavic one. A strong choice with a connection to Romania or Moldova, or as a stepping stone toward Slavic grammar on familiar vocabulary.
Germanic Languages (FSI Category I-II: 750-900 Hours)
English is Germanic, so this family is your closest relative in core grammar, basic vocabulary and sentence structure.
German
FSI estimate: 900 hours (Category II) | Reading difficulty: MEDIUM
Four cases, three genders and verb-final subordinate clauses demand precision in speech but are manageable, sometimes helpful, in reading. Long compounds (“Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften”, legal protection insurance companies) are built from recognizable words, so reading becomes puzzle-solving. The alphabet is Latin plus ä, ö, ü and ß, spelling mostly phonetic. Roots are shared (“Haus,” “Wasser,” “Buch”), though many common words have drifted out of recognition.
Content library: Enormous. German is the most widely spoken native language in Europe, with massive publishing output and Goethe, Kafka, Mann and Hesse.
The honest assessment: Harder than Romance languages, easier than most expect; cases matter less for reading than for speaking.
Dutch
FSI estimate: 600-750 hours (Category I) | Reading difficulty: LOW
The closest major language to English: “water” is “water,” “boek” is “book,” “huis” is “house,” “appel” is “apple,” and “De kat zit op de mat” is “The cat sits on the mat.” Academic and technical vocabulary is heavily shared, and the grammar is simpler than German: no case system, two genders instead of three.
Content library: High publishing output per capita and well-regarded authors (Harry Mulisch, Cees Nooteboom), but small total volume next to English, French or German, and many Dutch authors also publish in English.
The honest assessment: Probably the single easiest language for an English speaker to read. The catch: nearly all Dutch speakers are fluent in English, which can sap motivation. If reading ease is your main criterion, Dutch is the answer.
Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish
FSI estimate: 600-750 hours (Category I) | Reading difficulty: LOW-MEDIUM
Viking-era Old Norse gave English many words, so Swedish “bok” (book), “hus” (house) and “vatten” (water) are recognizable; Norwegian is especially close. Norwegian and Swedish spelling is fairly transparent, while Danish spelling preserves sounds speech has lost, a gap like French. Grammar: two genders, no cases, fairly fixed word order, verbs that do not change for person.
Content library: Per capita among the world’s most prolific publishers. Nordic crime fiction (Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbø, Henning Mankell) is globally popular, and non-fiction output is strong.
The honest assessment: Underrated: easy to read, rich literatures, and mutually intelligible in writing, so one opens all three. Downside: virtually all Scandinavians speak excellent English.
Slavic Languages (FSI Category III: ~1,100 Hours)
A significant step up: more complex grammar (cases, aspect, flexible word order), fewer English cognates, and Cyrillic for several of them.
Russian
FSI estimate: 1,100 hours | Reading difficulty: MEDIUM-HIGH
Cyrillic has 33 letters, many like Latin or Greek ones, readable (slowly) within a week. Spelling is reasonably phonetic; unmarked, unpredictable stress (unstressed “o” sounds like “a”) affects pronunciation more than comprehension. Grammar is the real challenge: six cases, three genders, two verb aspects (perfective and imperfective), word order driven by case endings, which at least mark each word’s role. International terms (“televizor,” “kompyuter,” “restoran”) and French borrowings (“byuro,” “shofyor”) give footholds.
Content library: One of the greatest in world literature: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Bulgakov and a vast contemporary scene. Russian is also a major language of science, mathematics and chess literature.
The honest assessment: A long-term investment. Cyrillic is a speed bump; grammar and vocabulary are the real cost, repaid by one of history’s most celebrated literatures.
Polish
FSI estimate: 1,100 hours | Reading difficulty: HIGH
No script barrier, but consonant clusters that look impenetrable: “szczęście” (happiness), “bezwzględny” (ruthless). Arguably the most complex Slavic grammar for English speakers: seven cases, elaborate conjugation, gender reaching plurals and past-tense verbs. Digraphs (“sz,” “cz,” “rz,” “dz”) are single sounds and nasal vowels add a layer, but the rules have no exceptions.
Content library: Significant, with Nobel laureates (Szymborska, Miłosz, Sienkiewicz, Tokarczuk) and a vibrant contemporary scene. Poland has one of Europe’s highest reading rates.
The honest assessment: One of the hardest European languages to read, with a steep start, rewarded by a rich literary culture and a strategic Central European language.
Czech and Slovak
FSI estimate: 1,100 hours | Reading difficulty: MEDIUM-HIGH
Mutually intelligible, with most of Polish’s complexity: seven cases, extensive conjugation, grammatical gender. Diacritics (háčky and čárky, hooks and accents) replace consonant clusters, so words look friendlier: Czech “štěstí” (happiness) versus Polish “szczęście.” Phonology is complex but regular, and Czech grammar is known for consistency.
Content library: Respectable. Czech literature is internationally known (Kafka wrote in German, but Kundera, Čapek and Hašek wrote in Czech). Slovak literature is smaller but shares much with Czech.
The honest assessment: Slightly more approachable to read than Polish because the spelling is less visually dense; the grammar is comparable. Strong choices with personal ties to Central Europe.
East Asian Languages (FSI Category IV: ~2,200 Hours)
The greatest challenge for English speakers, mainly because the writing systems take enormous time and the grammar works on different principles.
Japanese
FSI estimate: 2,200 hours | Reading difficulty: VERY HIGH
Three writing systems, often in one sentence: hiragana (46 phonetic characters, grammatical elements), katakana (46, foreign words) and kanji (roughly 2,136 designated “commonly used”). Kana take a few weeks, kanji years. A kanji has several readings (on’yomi from Chinese, kun’yomi native): “today” is “now” + “day” but read “kyou.” The grammar is regular (predictable verbs, clear particles, no articles or gender); the hard parts are subject-object-verb order, honorific levels and kanji vocabulary.
Content library: More books per year than almost any other country, manga as a massive resource, world-renowned fiction (Murakami, Kawabata, Mishima), material at every level.
The honest assessment: A long-term commitment; the first year mostly builds script literacy. The payoff is one of the most prolific publishing cultures, and manga and light novels are valuable stepping stones to literary texts.
Chinese (Mandarin)
FSI estimate: 2,200 hours | Reading difficulty: VERY HIGH (but grammar is simple)
Characters only. Literate adults know 6,000 to 8,000; newspapers need roughly 3,000. Each is a syllable and a meaning, and radicals (components) hint at meaning or sound, unreliably. The grammar has no conjugation, declension, articles, gender or plural markers, uses fixed subject-verb-object order and shows tense by context and particles. The four Mandarin tones matter for speech, not reading, so reading can far outpace speaking.
Content library: Enormous: millennia of literature, massive contemporary publishing and virtually unlimited online news, blogs and web novels.
The honest assessment: A character-memorization marathon with a grammar sprint: hundreds of characters before simple texts, then grammar that never holds you back. The system is logical once radicals click.
Korean
FSI estimate: 2,200 hours | Reading difficulty: HIGH
Hangul, created in 1443 by King Sejong, is often called the most logical alphabet ever designed: syllable blocks built from letters for specific sounds, readable within a few days. The difficulty is grammar: subject-object-verb order, agglutinative verbs, elaborate speech levels and honorifics, particles. Vocabulary overlaps little with English but borrows heavily from Chinese (as English did from Latin).
Content library: Growing fast, with Han Kang’s Nobel Prize and the Korean wave drawing attention. Manhwa (Korean comics), web novels and K-drama scripts give plenty to read.
The honest assessment: Much easier to read than Japanese or Chinese, with genuinely complex grammar: the best script-to-difficulty ratio in East Asia.
Other Notable Languages
Turkish
FSI estimate: 1,100 hours (Category III) | Reading difficulty: MEDIUM
Latin alphabet plus a few characters, almost perfectly phonetic. Agglutinative: “Evlerinizden” (“from your houses”) is “ev” (house) + “ler” (plural) + “iniz” (your) + “den” (from). Extremely regular, with almost no irregular verbs and vowel harmony (suffix vowels match the root).
Content library: Moderate, with a Nobel laureate (Orhan Pamuk), a growing contemporary scene and abundant online content from 85 million people.
The honest assessment: Underrated for readers: more predictable than many “easier” European languages. The main challenge is unfamiliar Turkic, non-Indo-European vocabulary.
Arabic
FSI estimate: 2,200 hours (Category IV) | Reading difficulty: HIGH
Right to left, letters changing shape by position (initial, medial, final, isolated), short vowels usually omitted: “ktb” could be “kataba” (he wrote), “kutub” (books) or “kutiba” (it was written). Arguably the hardest reading challenge of any major language. Three-consonant roots help guess words: K-T-B gives “kitab” (book), “katib” (writer), “maktaba” (library). Diglossia: you read Modern Standard Arabic (books, news) but hear quite different dialects (Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf).
Content library: Classical Arabic literature is one of the oldest and richest traditions; modern publishing is significant but fragmented across dialects and national literatures.
The honest assessment: A new script, no vowels, grammar unlike any European language: a steep curve, though the root system is beautiful once it clicks. Choose it with genuine motivation.
Hindi
FSI estimate: 1,100 hours (Category III) | Reading difficulty: MEDIUM
Devanagari looks intimidating but is one of the most phonetic scripts in the world, learnable in two to four weeks. Grammar: two genders, postpositions (after the noun), verb conjugation, subject-object-verb order. Borrowings from Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English, especially English in technology, business and urban speech, give footholds.
Content library: Substantial literature (Premchand, Harivansh Rai Bachchan) and massive publishing: India publishes more books in Hindi than in English. Bollywood scripts, news and online content are endless.
The honest assessment: More approachable than its FSI category suggests. After a few weeks on the script, reading is about vocabulary and grammar, not decoding.
Quick Comparison Table
| Language | FSI Hours | Script | Spelling Regularity | Reading Difficulty | Content Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish | 600-750 | Latin | Very high | LOW | Massive |
| Dutch | 600-750 | Latin | High | LOW | Moderate |
| Italian | 600-750 | Latin | Very high | LOW | Good |
| French | 600-750 | Latin | Low (silent letters) | LOW-MEDIUM | Massive |
| Portuguese | 600-750 | Latin | High | LOW-MEDIUM | Large |
| Swedish | 600-750 | Latin | High | LOW-MEDIUM | Good |
| Norwegian | 600-750 | Latin | High | LOW-MEDIUM | Good |
| German | 900 | Latin | High | MEDIUM | Massive |
| Romanian | 600-750 | Latin | High | MEDIUM | Moderate |
| Turkish | 1,100 | Latin | Very high | MEDIUM | Moderate |
| Hindi | 1,100 | Devanagari | Very high | MEDIUM | Large |
| Russian | 1,100 | Cyrillic | Moderate | MEDIUM-HIGH | Massive |
| Czech | 1,100 | Latin | High | MEDIUM-HIGH | Good |
| Korean | 2,200 | Hangul | Very high | HIGH | Growing |
| Polish | 1,100 | Latin | High (dense clusters) | HIGH | Good |
| Arabic | 2,200 | Arabic | Low (vowels omitted) | HIGH | Large |
| Chinese | 2,200 | Characters | N/A | VERY HIGH | Massive |
| Japanese | 2,200 | Mixed (3 systems) | N/A | VERY HIGH | Massive |
How to Choose: A Decision Framework
1. Start with Motivation
The most important factor, and the most undervalued. A learner passionate about Japanese (manga, anime, trips to Tokyo) will outperform one who picked Spanish as “easy.” Research consistently shows motivation is the strongest predictor of success: difficulty adds time, lack of motivation ends the effort. If a language fascinates you, choose it regardless of FSI category.
2. Consider Available Content
Spanish, French, German, Russian, Japanese and Chinese have massive amounts of books, news and media. Smaller languages (Slovak, Georgian, Swahili) may slow you at the intermediate stage, when you need volumes of comprehensible input. Knowing how many words you need for each language sets realistic expectations.
3. Factor In Script Familiarity
For the fastest start, choose a Latin-alphabet language and read real sentences on day one. For a new script (Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Korean, Japanese, Chinese), budget two to four weeks for the script before reading. That is a reality to plan for, not a reason to avoid them.
4. Think About Your Goals
- Career: Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, German, and French consistently rank as the most valuable languages in the global job market.
- Travel: Choose the language of the country or region you plan to visit. Practical motivation sustains study.
- Literature: French, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, and German have the deepest literary traditions for modern readers.
- Heritage: If you have family connections to a language, you already have built-in motivation and possibly some passive knowledge.
5. Consider Your Existing Languages
Difficulty is relative to what you know. A Spanish speaker finds Portuguese and Italian trivially easy, a Russian speaker has a head start on any Slavic language, and a Hindi speaker already knows Devanagari and shares vocabulary with Urdu.
The Contrarian Take: Difficulty Does Not Matter as Much as You Think
The gap between “easy” and “hard” languages is mostly time, not achievability. Spanish takes roughly 600 hours to professional proficiency, Japanese 2,200, a ratio of about 3.5 to 1. Over years of daily practice, that is advanced reading in two years versus five or six. Both fit in a normal life.
What kills language projects is boredom, inconsistency and a language you do not care about. A motivated learner of Arabic who reads every day will reach reading fluency; a bored learner of Spanish who quits after two months will not. The real question is which language you will still be studying a year from now.
How Lingo7 Fits In
Whatever you choose, you need enough reading at a level you understand. Lingo7 supports 49 languages with parallel reading: your target language beside a translation in your native language, so you read authentic books from the start, before your grammar catches up. Native audio narration links written words to pronunciation, and spaced repetition moves the words you meet into long-term memory.
From a Category I language like Spanish to a Category IV language like Japanese, the method is the same: read real books, understand through parallel text, build vocabulary through repeated exposure. Difficulty decides how long the journey takes, not whether it is possible.
The Bottom Line
There is no single “best” language. Spanish is the easiest major language for English speakers to read; Japanese and Chinese demand the most time. Use difficulty ratings to plan your time, not to make the decision. Then choose the language that makes you want to read one more page.