February 7th, 2020

How Long Does It Take and How Much Does It Cost to Learn a Language?

How long does it take to learn a language? 3 months? 3 years? 30 years? And how much money does it cost to learn a language? I’ve analysed my experience learning 13 languages over the past 20+ years to find out.

I was visiting a good friend of mine who’s a freelance video editor and on his desktop, the screen background was an image that’s stuck with me for years.

It went a little something like this:

If you want a job doing there’s a few options, but you can’t have everything.

It can be cheap and fast but not good.

It can be cheap and good but not fast.

It can be fast and good but not cheap.

It can be fast and cheap but not good.

This same principle works with language learning too (because my brain finds a way to apply everything to language learning.)

So let’s take a look at how this works with languages.

Page Contents

How Long Does It Take and How Much Does It Cost to Learn a Language?

The answer to that question depends on how much money (cheap vs expensive) and time (fast vs slow) you can dedicate to learning that language.

Just as we’ve seen above, you can do things quick but it’ll either cost you more money or not be as good, or you can take your time and perhaps even spend less money on better end results.

So let’s take a look at my own analysis of over 20 years of learning 13 languages to find out.

I’ve estimated time and cost, and I’ve used my own judgement on my language skill to rate how “good” each feels to me.

French

Time: 20+ years. Since 1998. So countless hours at this stage. But many years in that time when not actively learning. Going to guess around 2000 hours of focused study.

Cost: ~£1500 (in school so most French education free but have paid for books etc over the years, and did travel to France a bit on school exchanges, work experience etc)

Good?: I’m very happy with my French. I make mistakes because I be human.

Spanish

Time: 15+ years. Since 2003. Again, countless in terms of hours. And again, many years in that time when not actively learning. If I had to guess I’d say at least 1500 hours of focused study.

Cost: ~£1000 (again, mostly school-based so education free, but paid for books etc, and have travelled a lot in Spanish-speaking countries, which has helped me learn)

Good?: I’m very happy with my Spanish. I make mistakes because I are human.

Italian

Time: 2 years of university study to intermediate level. 2009 and 2011. Roughly 4 hours a week for two 9 month courses = ~288 hours. Plus bits of time since with language exchange, revisiting the language etc. Probably around 300 hours.

Cost: ~£200 (my university courses for Italian were actually free and I never took lessons so I have spent very little here)

Good?: Pretty happy with my Italian. Can have a conversation comfortably but many gaps in my vocab resulting in switching to Spanish words, and fuzzy advanced grammar.

Mandarin Chinese

Time: 1 year of university study at beginner level. 2009. Roughly 4 hours a week for 9 months = ~144 hours. I went to China for 2 weeks in 2011. Plus minimal bits of time since revisiting the language etc. Probably around 150 hours.

Cost: ~£500 (free to study but did travel there, which helped so adding some cost here from that)

Good?: My Chinese isn’t great. I’ve never had the chance or need to really get back to it properly since but I do feel the foundation helped me with later learning Japanese and Korean.

German

Time: 2 years of university study to intermediate level. 2012 and 2013. Roughly 4 hours a week for two 9 month courses = ~288 hours. Intense language sessions with tutors on italki towards the end of my university study in 2013-14. Plus bits of time since with language exchange, revisiting the language etc. Probably around 350 hours.

Cost: ~£2000 (I did German as additional courses, which meant I had to pay ~£500 per course, then took a lot of italki lessons)

Good?: My German is reasonable. I tend to put it on a par with my Italian and Portuguese.

Dutch

Time: Only around 3-4 months, at the same time of studying multiple languages. In terms of hours, I’d estimate roughly 60 hours (5 hours a week for 12 weeks).

Cost: ~£130 (Dutch italki lessons)

Good?: Not really. I was good for a short time, especially considering the time I spent learning but I don’t feel confident tell someone I speak Dutch.

Portuguese

Time: 3 months in total (2 months in 2014 and 1 month in 2019). Roughly 7-10 hours a week for the 2 months. Call it 8, so that’s 2 months = 8 weeks x 8 hours = 64 hours. Plus 12 hours from January 2019 = 76 hours.

Cost: ~£200 (Portuguese italki lessons, not including visiting Portugal or Brazil very briefly as part of other trips)

Good?: Surprisingly so! I do actually like speaking Portuguese and feel confident enough to put it up there with my German and Italian as what I loosely consider my “second tier” languages.

Japanese

Time: Just over a year. From October 2014 to January 2016. Probably around 5-8 hours a week. Let’s go with 6 hours and calculate…16 months = ~64 weeks = 384 hours.

Cost: ~£400 (italki lessons, second hand books, accounting for a fraction of the cost of visiting after having studied the language)

Good?: Not awful! Japanese is definitely a language I’d like to revisit, but for now, it’s good enough. Kinda my “third tier”!

Esperanto

Time: Around 2 months. I was only really working on Duolingo, so I’d guess around 20-30 minutes per day. Roughly 30 hours.

Cost: ~£1 (2 Esperanto books from a car boot sale!)

Good?: Not now. I was ok while I was learning, and I can still read, but I don’t really use the language so my speaking ability has faded.

Indonesian

Time: September 2016 to April 2017 (8 months) then less focus May to August 2017. For the 8 months, at least 1 hour per weekday = 160 hours. Plus 1 hours a week when less focus = ~12 hours. Total of approximately 172 hours.

Cost: ~£100. The course was a gift that all attendees got from Teach Yourself at a previous Polyglot Gathering. We could choose any language, I chose Indonesian. All I spent was on a handful of italki lessons.

Good?: I know more than I think I feel confident saying, if that makes sense? I think it’s one that would come to me easily again with a little attention.

Related: 9 Reasons to Learn Indonesian

Korean

Time: Feb 2016 to September 2016 (8 months) and 8 months roughly again in 2019. Approximately an hour every weekday throughout, which equates to roughly 340 hours. Plus 20 minutes of weekday daily study from September 2018 to December 2018 = roughly 24 hours. Total of approx 364 hours.

Cost: ~£500. A guess to cover online lessons and a fraction of travelling to Korea.

Good?: Somewhere in the middle!

Guarani

Time: May 2017 to April 2018. 1 year with weird gaps of study in between due to travel, 3 months focused study before leaving. In Paraguay, I took a course for a week that was a total of 20 hours. When I returned, I kept 20 minutes daily contact for 6 months or so. That makes a rough total of 104 hours.

Cost: ~£500. italki lessons in advance, my week at Guarani school in Paraguay, plus books I purchased in Paraguay.

Good?: Not too shabby! I LOVE this language and my level isn’t too bad considering how hard it is to find chances to practice and learn outside of the country.

Bulgarian

Time: I’d never really tracked my time or money investment into learning a language in the past but recently I decided to start documenting this better to help me put together this post as accurately as possible.

I started to learn Bulgarian around 6 weeks ahead of a short trip to that country.

My time on it added up to around 20 hours italki over 6 weeks + 1 hour a day regular study for 3 weeks = 41 + little bits in Asia before I got home = around 45 hours.

Cost: Bulgarian was a language I’d never studied before and I had a relatively short timeframe in which I want to get good. This meant my two key elements were fast and good, so it wasn’t cheap.

I spent around £400, which is more than I’d normally spend on learning a language in that timeframe so I was curious to see the results.

Good>: I’m actually pretty impressed by how much I improved over such a short timeframe. Although I’d never really studied a Slavic language before, I had learnt lots of bits of various Slavic languages for travel, and that definitely helps to make things easier.

So…how long does it take and how much does it cost to learn a language?

I wanted to see all of these calculations and guesstimations in a more visual all-in-one kinda scenario. So I got busy with Google Sheets and made some graphs comparing my ability to the time and money put into each language. All highly scientific you understand.

How long does it take to learn a language? 3 months? 3 years? 30 years? And how much money does it cost to learn a language? I've analysed my experience learning 13 languages over the past 20+ years to find out. ➔

As you can see, when we take into consideration that Spanish and French are higher because it’s been more time, there’s no clear pattern of spending more money on a language being more beneficial.

This means that the thing stopping most people from learning a language isn’t cost but lack of time, or lack of obviously available time. If that sounds like you, I have something to help…

February 7th, 2020