How Long Does it Take to Learn Chinese?

The US State Department's Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has developed estimates for how much effort is required by native English speakers to learn various languages. They list the typical study requirements for developing to a level of, “general professional proficiency”, based on FSI experience over the years.

2200 hours of classroom time is listed for Mandarin, versus 575-600 hours for languages like French and Spanish and 750 hours for German. By this metric, Mandarin is ~4x more difficult to learn than French or Spanish.

The FSI estimates assume the student puts in about an equivalent amount of time outside the classroom as well. So, this totals around 4400 hours for gaining proficiency in Mandarin.

I’ve been putting in about 4-5 hours per week on average, so I guess I’m looking at somewhere around 20 years in total to become proficient. It seems that I’m currently only 2.5 years into a multi-decade journey.