How Long Does It Take to Learn Spanish?

For an English speaker, reaching a professional level in Spanish takes about 1,200 hours of study, according to US government figures. At an hour a day, that's a little over three years. Spanish is one of the quickest languages for English speakers, and you'll hold simple conversations and read easy stories long before you reach that level.

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). Spanish is in Category I, the languages closest to English:

Language	Category	Typical training time	Class hours
Italian, Portuguese	I	24 weeks	About 552
Spanish, French	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 30 weeks of Spanish comes to about 1,200 hours in total.

What that means for you

Study per day	Time to 1,200 hours
30 minutes	About 6.5 years
1 hour	About 3.3 years
2 hours	About 20 months

Please take these as rough estimates. The State Department's students are full-time, with professional teachers, and their goal is high: they train to work in the language. The department also says the time varies with ability, earlier language learning and time in class. A self-taught learner may need longer per level, while someone who wants to travel or read needs far less.

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 any word aloud	Days. Spanish spelling is very regular
Greeting people, ordering food, asking the way	Early on, with everyday words and a few set phrases
Talking about yourself in the present	Weeks, once the regular verbs settle
Telling a story in the past	Months, because Spanish has two past tenses that work together
Reading a short novel with a translation beside it	Sooner than you'd think, since the translation carries you
Following fast speech, films and different accents	Years

Who gets a head start

The official figures are for English speakers. Nobody publishes them for other first languages, but some advantages are clear.

• Portuguese and Italian. These are Spanish's close relatives. Much of the vocabulary and grammar is shared, and reading Spanish is easy for both from the start, though speaking well still takes work.
• French, Catalan and Romanian. Also Romance languages, with the same verb system and many related words.
• English. A large share of English vocabulary comes from the same Latin roots, like información, posible and animal. Watch for false friends: embarazada means pregnant, not embarrassed.

What takes the longest

• The past tenses. The preterite says what happened; the imperfect sets the scene. Leía cuando sonó el teléfono: I was reading when the phone rang. Our guide to preterite vs imperfect helps.
• Ser vs estar. Two verbs for "to be". Es aburrido means he's boring; está aburrido means he's bored.
• The subjunctive. English barely uses it, Spanish uses it every day: Quiero que vengas, I want you to come.
• Listening. Spanish is spoken fast, and accents vary a lot from Madrid to Mexico City to Buenos Aires. Real listening from early on matters more than any rule.

We go through these in more detail in is Spanish hard to learn?

What speeds you up

• Study every day. Small, regular sessions beat occasional long ones.
• Spend time with real Spanish. Reading and understandable listening build vocabulary and instinct.
• Choose a goal. An exam like DELE B2 or SIELE gives you something definite to work toward, and so does a trip.
• Talk early. Spanish rewards guessing, since so many words look like English ones. Use what you have.

Start today

You can begin right now with our free Spanish grammar lessons and word lists with audio, with no account needed. When you're ready, see the best books to learn Spanish.

Our Learn Spanish app takes you from vocabulary and grammar through graded reading to Unamuno and Pérez Galdós, 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.