How Hard Is Japanese to Learn? A Complete Guide for English Speakers

What the experts say about Japanese difficulty

The US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) trains diplomats and government employees in foreign languages and tracks how long each language takes to reach professional working proficiency. They classify Japanese as a Category IV language — the hardest category — requiring approximately 2,200 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency (roughly equivalent to B2–C1 level).