Learning a foreign language takes a lot of hours. A native English speaker learning Spanish will need around 1300-1400 hours to reach a high level of fluency. Spanish is closely related to English, which makes it faster. If your target is something like Russian or Japanese, expect 1700 or 2700+ hours respectively. Categories of Language Difficulty
Everyone learns differently and these are only estimates, but the fact remains: no matter how you do the math, it takes a very long time to learn a language.
Most people won't do something they hate for even 50 hours, let alone thousands. If you want to be successful, you must find a way to enjoy language learning.
This is why a large part of the Refold method is built around enjoyment. The easiest way to enjoy a new language is to reach what we call the "fun threshold" — the point in your journey when you know enough to enjoy the content behind the language.
Once you're beyond basic comprehension, all you need to do is find things you enjoy. Getting past basic comprehension is the hardest part, but once you can relax with a book, TV show, or podcast, it's mostly downhill from there.
As a beginner, you don't know enough to make sense of anything. Most sentences are gibberish with maybe a few words you recognize. But as you learn more, you start to actually enjoy things — stories, jokes, people's personalities.
We understand this, and we try to make the road to the fun threshold enjoyable too — but it's more of a "Type 2 fun." Type 1 fun is fun in the moment: you're laughing and having a great time. Type 2 fun can be difficult or frustrating while it's happening, but afterward you're glad you did it. Putting in the effort to understand a simple sentence in a new language can be quite frustrating in the moment, but afterwards, you get a feeling of accomplishment for pushing yourself to learn more.
The beginner phases can be tough, especially if you haven't found things you like about learning yet. Framing it as a puzzle or personal challenge can help.
This isn't meant to scare you away — it's meant to prepare you. With the right mindset and approach, anyone can get over the fun threshold and make it to fluency.
The hour estimates in this article are based on data from the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which has been teaching languages to American diplomats for decades. Their estimates are frequently miscited — the hours on their website are classroom hours only, but students also do roughly 17 hours per week of self-study on top of 23 hours in class. Our estimates are adapted from the FSI data to better reflect immersion-based learning. How Long Does It Take to Learn a Language
The importance of motivation and enjoyment in language learning is well-supported by research. Dörnyei (2005) has written extensively on the psychology of language learner motivation, and the relationship between intrinsic motivation and sustained effort is one of the most robust findings in educational psychology. The "fun threshold" concept isn't a formal research term, but it reflects what studies on free voluntary reading (Krashen, 2004; McQuillan, 2019) have shown: learners who find enjoyable content in their target language sustain their effort far longer than those who rely on willpower alone.