When I first began learning French as a second language, I had one burning question on my mind. How long does it really take to learn French?
It seems this is a common question. After all, it’s totally normal to wonder how long it’ll take before you start seeing returns on your time investment. It’s difficult to dedicate many hours of learning a new language, especially when we all want to see quick results as a reward for our hard work.
Honestly, humans aren’t so great with uncertainty, and it’d be nice if we could predict with certainty how long it would take to learn French.
However, as with most skills, it’s difficult to answer how long it’ll take for you. After all, what does “learning French” really mean to you? Would you like to know the core basics so that you can get around France while knowing how to ask where the toilets are en français? Are you looking to be conversational, so that you can easily have conversations in French with friends? Do you need to converse in French for business meetings or business trips? Perhaps fluency is your eventual goal, either because you’re looking to emigrate or simply because you have a passion for linguistics.
The most important thing to first define is your level of “done.” When will you know if you’ve “learned French”? Only you can say, based upon the goal that you’ve set for yourself.
Pour moi, my goal was to learn the absolute basics, so that I could take a trip to France with confidence in my ability to speak the language as a beginner. Here in this post, I’ll share with you how long it took to learn beginner French.
