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Asian languages ranked by difficulty
The short answer
For English speakers, Malay and Indonesian are the easiest major Asian languages (FSI Category II, about 900 class hours). Vietnamese and Thai sit in the middle (about 1,100), and Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and Korean are hardest (about 2,200).
Easiest to hardest for English speakers
Indonesian Bahasa IndonesiaLatinDifficulty 2 / 5About 900 class hours · FSI IIBiggest hurdle: Gap between formal Indonesian and everyday colloquial speech
Malay Bahasa MelayuLatin (Rumi) + JawiDifficulty 2 / 5About 900 class hours · FSI IIBiggest hurdle: Affixation (me-, ber-, -kan, -i) and formal vs colloquial registers
Balinese Basa BaliLatin + Balinese scriptDifficulty 3 / 5No FSI estimateBiggest hurdle: Speech levels (Alus, Madia, Kasar)
Cebuano Sinugbuanon / BinisayaLatinDifficulty 3 / 5No FSI estimateBiggest hurdle: Verb focus system and few structured courses
Tagalog / Filipino Wikang TagalogLatinDifficulty 3 / 5About 1100 class hours · FSI IIIBiggest hurdle: Verb focus and aspect system
Khmer ភាសាខ្មែរKhmer abugidaDifficulty 4 / 5About 1100 class hours · FSI IIIBiggest hurdle: Vowel system and subscript consonants
Lao ພາສາລາວLao abugidaDifficulty 4 / 5About 1100 class hours · FSI IIIBiggest hurdle: Tones and scarce learning materials
Mongolian Монгол хэлCyrillic + traditional Mongolian scriptDifficulty 4 / 5About 1100 class hours · FSI IIIBiggest hurdle: Vowel harmony and the case system
Thai ภาษาไทยThai abugidaDifficulty 4 / 5About 1100 class hours · FSI IIIBiggest hurdle: Tone rules tied to consonant classes
Vietnamese Tiếng ViệtLatin (Chữ Quốc ngữ)Difficulty 4 / 5About 1100 class hours · FSI IIIBiggest hurdle: Tones and vowel sounds, plus the pronoun system
Korean 한국어Hangul (+ occasional Hanja)Difficulty 4 / 5About 2200 class hours · FSI IVBiggest hurdle: Verb endings and speech levels
Hakka 客家話HanziDifficulty 5 / 5No FSI estimateBiggest hurdle: Dialect variation and scarce learner materials
Shanghainese 上海話HanziDifficulty 5 / 5No FSI estimateBiggest hurdle: Word-level tone sandhi and few learner materials
Taiwanese Hokkien 台語Hanzi + Tâi-lô/POJDifficulty 5 / 5No FSI estimateBiggest hurdle: Tone sandhi on almost every syllable
Cantonese 廣東話 / 粵語Hanzi (Traditional) + Cantonese charactersDifficulty 5 / 5About 2200 class hours · FSI IVBiggest hurdle: Six tones and a written standard that differs from the spoken language
Chinese (Mandarin) 中文 / 普通話 / 國語Hanzi (Traditional & Simplified)Difficulty 5 / 5About 2200 class hours · FSI IVBiggest hurdle: Characters: around 2,500 to 3,000 for comfortable reading
Japanese 日本語Kanji + Hiragana + KatakanaDifficulty 5 / 5About 2200 class hours · FSI IVBiggest hurdle: Kanji with several readings each (2,136 jōyō kanji)