How long does it take to learn French?

The French estimate comes from the US Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the State Department school that teaches languages to American diplomats before they go abroad. Its language training page lists how long its students usually need for each language. If you open that page, you will see the name National Foreign Affairs Training Center at the top. The figures on it are the ones people call the FSI’s.

French is in Category I, the group the page calls “languages close to English.” French and Spanish are listed at 30 weeks. The other seven languages in the group, such as Italian and Portuguese, are listed at 24 weeks. The page does not say why French takes six weeks longer than Italian.

Those weeks are full-time study. The page says a typical week is 23 hours in class and 17 hours of self-study, which means homework and practice done alone. Thirty weeks of that is 690 hours in class and 510 hours of homework.

The page also says the real time changes from person to person. It gives no way to turn its class hours into hours with an app or a podcast, so read every figure here as a rough guide.

Becoming conversational in French takes roughly 350 to 400 hours of lessons and study. That is a little over half of the professional figure. The hours come from a table made for people learning English, because we found no official table for French.

French courses use six levels, from A1 for a beginner up to C2. The levels come from the Council of Europe, and they are the same for every language. At level B1 you can deal with most situations while traveling where the language is spoken. At level B2 you can talk with native speakers, and neither of you has to work hard to keep the talk going.

The Council of Europe gives no hours for its levels. Cambridge English, which runs English exams, publishes rough hours of lessons and guided study for people learning English. The table below uses those hours.

The months are rounded, with every day of the week counted. The hours for B1 and B2 are estimates.

Level B2 matters if you want to study in France. Campus France, the French agency for students from other countries, says B2 is required for first-year admission through the advance application called the DAP.

The FSI’s own target is higher. It is level 3 on the scale US government agencies use, where you can take part in most formal and informal conversations on practical, social and professional topics.

Three months of French is enough for a real start, and not enough for the level most people mean by fluent. The FSI’s own numbers show why. Three months is about 13 weeks.

Even at the school’s full-time pace, that many weeks is 299 class hours. That is 43% of the hours its own students get for French.

At one hour a day, the same weeks come to 91 hours. Cambridge puts the first level, A1, at about 90 to 100 hours for learners of English. At A1 you can introduce yourself, and ask and answer simple questions when the other person speaks slowly.

So expect a good beginning from three months, and keep going. One year at an hour a day is 364 hours, which is inside the range for level B1. Why a small amount every day adds up is on the power of consistency.

French gets better so slowly that one week feels just like the week before. Two checks show the change. The first is your hours: did this week reach the number you planned? The second is one page of writing. Once a month, write about your day in French for 10 minutes without looking anything up. Keep the page, and compare it with last month’s.

Learning French takes hundreds of hours, and it is easy to believe you studied more this week than you really did.

A good way to count your French hours takes the time from what you already write or say about your day. Then there is no timer to start, and no timer to forget. Most journaling apps ask how your day felt. They do not add up how much of it went to French, so you have no weekly number to compare with your plan.

One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.

You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: your French, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. So you can see how many hours of French you really did each week, and watch the months add up. Add French as a daily habit with the minutes you planned. When what you write about your day shows them, the app ticks it off and your streak goes on.

1. You write your day

2. It counts the hours

• French0m
• Work0m
• Sleep0m
• Unaccounted24h

3. It shows your week

S

M

T

W

T

F

S

French this week: 0m

On 6 of 7 days. The gap is the day without it.

An example day and week.

Play again

Write my first day

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Or scan with your phone's camera.

For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.

Every figure on this page comes from one of the pages below. We opened and read each of them for this page.

1. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute (read October 1, 2026). Foreign Language Training.
2. Council of Europe (read October 1, 2026). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Common Reference Levels, global scale.
3. Cambridge English Support (read October 1, 2026). Guided learning hours.
4. Campus France, the French agency for the promotion of higher education, international student services and international mobility (read October 13, 2026). How higher education works in France.
5. Interagency Language Roundtable (read October 1, 2026). Interagency Language Roundtable Language Skill Level Descriptions: Speaking.