How many hours do you need to learn Japanese?

Hi, this is Yuyujin.

Do you know how many hours you need to be a fluent Japanese speaker?

にほんごが　はなせるようにになるのに　なんじかん　ひつようか　ごぞんじですか。

I have heard 3,000 hours studying is necessary to speak English for Japanese.
FSI (Foreign Service Institute) shows language difficulty ranking for English speakers.

The group from easy to difficult is like below.

Category 1
Afrikaans, Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish

Category 2
German

Category 3
Indonesian, Malaysian, Swahili

Category 4
Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Polish, Russian, Thai, Turkish

Category 5
Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean

Japanese belongs to Category 5, the most difficult group.
FSI says it takes 88 weeks, 2200 hours, to learn Japanese.
This number is almost same number that I’ve heard about English studying time for Japanese.

I understand the difficulties of Japanese for English speakers.
But I feel it is much less than 3000 hours to enjoy communication  in Japanese as a traveler.
Japanese character and grammar needs time to study.
But Japanese pronunciation is easy to learn.

Japanese-Language Proficiency Test , Nihongo Nouryoku Shiken, says the guideline of study time as below.

N5: the level that can understand basic Japanese partly.
It needs 100 Kanji character, 800 words and 150 hours study.

N4: the level that can understand basic Japanese.
It needs 300 Kanji character, 1500 words and 300 hours study.

This guideline is much acceptable for Japanese beginners.

You can enjoy simple communication in Japanese after learning basic words and phrases.

Do your best!
Ganbatte Kudasai (がんばってください。)

OK, that’s it.
Thank you so much.
Have a good trip.