There’s a lot of talk across Asia about which countries have the best English-language skills. Of course English is the de facto language of business and so it’s very important for rising executives to have a good understanding of the language. However, what about the the reverse? How important is it for native English speakers to learn another language? It turns out that it is critical and it turns out that many English natives have a strong desire to do so. So we did some research and came up with a list of the easiest and hardest languages for English speakers to learn and approximately how long it will take them.

You’ll find the full Foreign Service Institute language difficulty ranking list below. No matter which category you’d like to take on, you can get a start at our Free Foreign Language Lessons collection, many of whose materials come produced by the FSI itself.

Category I: 23-24 weeks (575-600 hours)

via Big Think