How Long Does It Take to Learn German?
The US State Department puts German at about 36 weeks of full-time study, around 1,440 hours, for a professional level. What that means at an hour a day.
Learn GermanFree app with audio, quizzes and real booksFor an English speaker, reaching a professional level in German takes about 1,440 hours of study, according to US government figures. At an hour a day, that's close to four years. German takes longer than Spanish or French, mostly because of its grammar, but English gives you more of a head start than you might think, and everyday German comes much sooner.
What the official figures say
The US State Department publishes how long its staff usually take to reach a professional level (a score of 3 on the ILR scale). German is in Category II, a step above French and Spanish:
| Language | Category | Typical training time | Class hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Italian, Dutch, Swedish | I | 24 weeks | About 552 |
| French, Spanish | I | 30 weeks | About 690 |
| German | II | About 36 weeks | 828 |
| Russian, Turkish | III | About 44 weeks | 1,012 |
| Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin | IV | 88 weeks | 2,200 |
A typical week there is 23 hours in class plus 17 hours of self-study. So 36 weeks of German comes to about 1,440 hours in total.
Dutch and Swedish, German's Germanic relatives, are in the fastest group. German isn't, and the difference is mostly grammar: cases and the endings that come with them.
What that means for you
| Study per day | Time to 1,440 hours |
|---|---|
| 30 minutes | About 7.9 years |
| 1 hour | About 3.9 years |
| 2 hours | About 2 years |
Please take these as rough estimates. The State Department's students study full-time with professional teachers, and they're training to work in German. The department also says the time varies with ability, earlier language learning and time in class. Alone you may need more hours per level, and for travel or reading you need far fewer.
What comes first, and what comes later
This order comes from how the language is built, not from a study.
| Stage | When to expect it |
|---|---|
| Reading words aloud | Days. Spelling is far more regular than in English |
| Introducing yourself, shopping, asking the way | Early on, with everyday words and set phrases |
| Simple sentences in the present | Weeks, once the present tense and word order settle |
| Talking about the past | Months. Speech mostly uses the perfect tense, which is easier than it looks |
| Getting adjective endings right while speaking | Much later than learning the rule. It comes from hearing and reading a lot |
| Reading Kafka with a translation beside it | Sooner than you'd think, since the translation carries you |
| Following fast speech and dialects | Years |
Who gets a head start
The official figures are for English speakers. Nobody publishes them for other first languages, but some advantages are easy to see.
- Dutch, Luxembourgish and Yiddish. These are German's nearest relatives, and much of the vocabulary is recognisable straight away.
- Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Germanic too, with many shared words and a similar verb-second word order.
- Polish, Czech and Russian. Few shared words, but cases won't come as a shock.
- English. Everyday words often share a root: Haus (house), Wasser (water), trinken (drink), Hand (hand). The grammar is where English stops helping.
What takes the longest
- Noun gender. Der Tisch, die Tür, das Fenster: table, door and window are masculine, feminine and neuter, and das Mädchen (the girl) is neuter. Learn every noun with its article.
- Cases. The article changes with the noun's role: der Mann, den Mann, dem Mann, des Mannes. Start with nominative and accusative, then the dative.
- Word order. In a subordinate clause the verb goes to the end: Ich weiß, dass er morgen kommt. And separable verbs split: Ich rufe dich morgen an.
- Listening. Austrian, Swiss and regional German sound different from your textbook.
We look at these in more detail in is German hard to learn?
What speeds you up
- Study every day. Small, regular sessions beat occasional long ones.
- Learn nouns with der, die or das. It costs a second per word now and saves months later.
- Spend time with real German. Reading and understandable listening make endings feel right before you can explain them.
- Choose a goal. An exam like Goethe B1, TestDaF or the DTZ gives the hours a direction.
Start today
You can begin right now with our free German grammar lessons and word lists with audio, with no account needed. When you're ready, see the best books to learn German.
Our Learn German app takes you from vocabulary and grammar through graded reading to Kafka and Zweig, with a translation under every line. It's free to download, though some books and extra content need diamonds you earn while learning, or Premium.