Indonesian cheapest language to learn

Published 06/07/2016

Indonesian is the cheapest language for English speakers to learn, according to new research that looked at the expense and time it takes to learn a new language up to a fluent level.

Compiled by money saving website Voucherbox, the research looks at 28 languages offered on the language learning platform, Verbaling, focusing on the cost of learning per hour, and how many hours on average it takes to learn the language from scratch until fluency.

East Asian languages were found to be on the expensive end of the spectrum, the most costly of which was Korean. With one of the most expensive costs per hour at £18.71, learning the language up to a fluent level was calculated to cost £41,155 in total.

“Our calculations can be used as a way of working out the cost expectancy for studying various languages”

Mandarin and Japanese were the next most expensive languages to learn, according to the research, costing £29,367 and £24,375 in total, respectively.

These three languages were each also found to take 2,200 hours to reach a fluent level, contributing to the high cost.

“Although we understand that few people would end up learning a full language at an hourly rate, our calculations can be used as a way of working out the cost expectancy for studying various languages,” said Shane Forster, UK country manager at Voucherbox.

With the exception of Indonesian, a number of European languages were found to be just a fraction of the cost of the most-expensive Korean. Portuguese and Spanish, each taking a relatively low 600 hours to reach fluency, cost £6,138 and £6,157 respectively.

Other Western and Southern European languages, such as German, Dutch and Italian, also take less hours to learn for English speakers, all either 600 or 750 hours.

“We think this is really interesting research when taking the summer season into account, when many people may be looking to jet off somewhere abroad for a holiday or explore the world,” commented Forster.

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