It takes 2,200 hours to become generally proficient in Japanese

I've always wanted to learn a second language. Honestly, I've wanted to learn more than that.

I kind of want to learn Spanish, but I also kind of don't. I'd like to learn Korean and Japanese. And ASL. And maybe French because it sounds fantastic.

Anyways, according to the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service Institute, Japanese (and Korean) are a Category V language. Category V means it "usually takes 88 weeks or 2,200 hours to reach S-3/R-3 proficiency" (S is Speaking, R is Reading, and 3 means "Able to speak (or read) the language with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations in practical, social and professional topics.")

I feel like I can recognize quite a few Japanese words while watching anime but I guess they tend to use basic terms a lot of the time (especially in slice of life shows like My Dress-Up Darling)

Intimidating, yes. I've found Reddit threads of people disagreeing with this. "I read a post here a few weeks ago where somebody said they’ve been learning Japanese for 21 years and even they have moments where they feel like they don’t even know the language," someone says. "I've been studying Japanese for 10 years at various levels of intensity, but I've well eclipsed the 4000 hour mark and at best I'm of intermediate skill level," someone else says.

Ultra intimidating, ultra yes.

It's interesting to break things down like that though. I mean, 2,200 hours is insane. There are 8,760 hours in a year, 5,475 hours if you subtract 9 hours a night for sleep. 2,200 is almost half that time.

It makes me wonder, how many hours does it take to get proficient in other things too? And how many hours have I put in those?

I've been really happy with how I've been spending my 2026 tbh. I've been jumping into a lot of new hobbies and breaking bad habits of how I spent my time. I coworker bullied me into signing up for a marathon, so that will give me something to work towards fitness-wise, which I simultaneously dread and feel good about. I've been learning a bit of ASL and honestly I don't think that is anywhere near 2,200 hours haha.

How do you allocate your hours and how do you decide to spend your time? And idk, it's big to take on a project like language learning knowing up-front you won't get to a level of clear understanding in a year or even two. Time is kind of the only commodity we have at the end of the day, and learning to balance it is a skill maybe most of us will never master.

 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Was my weekend a good weekend? I honestly couldn't tell you.

Five of Pentacles (reversed)--End of difficult times, improvement, recovery.