They are in the same "larger family" in the sense they even use mostly the same structure and alphabet. Compare with Korean, which will surely require more than

They are in the same "larger family" in the sense they even use mostly the same structure and alphabet. Compare with Korean, which will surely require more than a couple of months. The CEFR/EU consider you only need around 800h to reach Advanced/C1 french level as an english native speaker, which is around 30 weeks full time. That is way more than "communicate basic ideas", which is more like an A. In fact, the oft-shared [1] map from the US' FSI considers than 24 weeks is enough for a US diplomat to reach _proficiency_ in French. [1] https://img.theculturetrip.com/1440x/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/language-difficulty-map.png https://img.theculturetrip.com/1440x/wp-content/uploads/2017... I think people seriously understimate the amount of hours a single month has. Programming languages are much easier to learn. Very likely you can even memorize the entire specification of your average programming language (save for a couple exceptions) in such time. Which I wouldn't do to learn a language, but just saying to prove the point.