How hard is it to learn Spanish?

The short answer

Spanish is one of the easier languages to start if your first language is English. Words are spelled the way they sound, and much of the vocabulary looks familiar. The U.S. Department of State, whose language school is widely known as the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), puts Spanish in Category I, its group of languages close to English.

Easier to start does not mean quick. The hard part arrives after a while, and it is the verbs. Each one has many forms, and you have to pick the right one every time you say something.

What English gives you for free

English is a Germanic language and Spanish comes from Latin, so the two are not close relatives. But English has taken in so many words from French and Latin that a lot of Spanish vocabulary is already half known.

• Words you can read on day one. Animal, hospital, color, doctor, hotel and idea are spelled the same in both languages. Familia, música, problema and importante are close enough to guess.
• Endings that convert. English -tion is usually -ción: nación, información, estación. English -ty is often -dad: universidad, actividad, electricidad. English -ous is often -oso: famoso, delicioso.
• Spelling you can trust. Spanish has five vowel sounds, and each letter is pronounced the same way almost every time. When you see a new word you can usually say it, and when you hear one you can usually spell it.

Basic word order is also the same as in English: subject, verb, object. María come una manzana is María eats an apple, word for word.

What is actually hard

The difficulty in Spanish is the grammar, and above all the verbs.

• Verbs change with the person. English has talk and talks. Spanish has six forms in every tense: hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, habláis, hablan. The word for I or you is often left out, so the ending is the only thing that tells you who is doing it.
• Two verbs for to be. Soy alto (I am tall) but estoy cansado (I am tired). Ser is for what something is, estar for how or where it is right now.
• Two past tenses. Hablé and hablaba can both be translated as I talked. Which one you need depends on whether something happened once or was ongoing.
• The subjunctive. After expressions of wanting, feeling and doubt the verb takes a separate form: quiero que vengas (I want you to come). English has only traces of it, as in if I were you.

Nouns have gender, which English does not. La casa (the house) is feminine and el coche (the car) is masculine, and adjectives follow: una casa blanca, un coche blanco. The rolled rr takes practice, and it matters: pero means but and perro means dog. Watch for false friends too. Embarazada means pregnant, not embarrassed.

How long it takes and how many people use it

The State Department trains U.S. government staff in about 60 languages and publishes how long each usually takes. Spanish is listed at 30 weeks. Category I as a whole runs 24 to 30 weeks, or 552 to 690 class hours, so Spanish sits at the long end with 690. That is the time usually expected to reach level 3 in speaking and listening on the government’s ILR scale, with 23 hours a week in class and 17 hours of self-study. A school course moves far more slowly, but the comparison between languages is still useful.

Ethnologue’s 2026 list counts 561.3 million people who use Spanish as a first or second language. That makes it the fourth largest language in the world, after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi.

How to start

• Begin with the most common verbs. Ser, estar, tener (to have) and ir (to go) are irregular and turn up in almost every sentence. Learn them in the present tense first.
• Learn nouns with their article. Put la casa and el coche on your word list, not just casa and coche, and you get the gender along with the word.
• Listen early. Spoken Spanish moves faster than textbook dialogues, and the words run together. Music and shows with Spanish subtitles train your ear.

How you study matters more than which language you picked. Read more in The basics of learning a language.

Practice Spanish vocabulary with Learn It

Learn It is a free iPhone and iPad app with no ads that quizzes you on vocabulary. You type in your word list and practice with Spelling, Multiple choice or Flashcards. Spelling makes you write the whole word correctly, and after each round you can practice just the ones you missed.

There are also ready-made quizzes, such as Everyday verbs in Spanish, Food and drink in Spanish and Numbers 1-10 in Spanish. All of them are listed under Spanish.