How many hours of English?

Learners who kept count have reported what they could follow at each stage. For an English speaker learning English, roughly:

1. 50 hoursSlow, simple speech made for learners
2. 150 hoursLearner videos at normal speed
3. 300 hoursEasy native videos on familiar topics
4. 600 hoursMost everyday native speech, with effort
5. 1,000 hoursNative content feels comfortable
6. 1,500 hoursNearly everything, even fast speech

Based on the Dreaming Spanish roadmap. These are the roadmap's landmarks as they stand. If you already speak a language close to English, expect to need fewer. How many hours you really need.

How Serval recognises English

Serval listens to short windows of each video's sound, up to thirty seconds at a time, and a small model on your own computer names the language. No audio is kept or sent anywhere. English is one of the 28 languages we measured against real recordings, and every one was labelled correctly. A label is only shown once two independent checks agree; when the audio is not clear enough, the video's time is not counted rather than guessed.

If English is a language you speak, mark it in Settings and English videos are recorded but not counted. If you are learning English, leave it unmarked and every English video counts.

You never have to tell Serval you are learning English. You only mark the languages you already speak, and everything else counts, so you can learn English alongside another language and see each one's hours separately.

Finding English to listen to

Search YouTube for English together with a topic you already enjoy: cooking, games, news, travel. Native speakers searching in their own language find content that searches in English miss. Early on, look for videos made for learners, with slow speech and lots of pictures, and move to native videos as they get easier; the hour landmarks above tell you roughly when.

English is written in the Latin alphabet. Serval goes by sound, not subtitles, so it counts the same whether you turn captions on or not.

Close relatives

English belongs to the West Germanic group. Serval also identifies Afrikaans, Dutch, German, Luxembourgish, Scots and Yiddish.

Questions

Does Serval work for English?

Yes. Serval identifies English from a video's audio, on your own computer, and counts the time you spend listening to it on YouTube, Twitch, Netflix and six more sites. English is one of the 28 languages it was measured on against real recordings, all labelled correctly. You do not have to tell it you are learning English; it works that out by listening.

How many hours does it take to understand English?

As a rough guide for an English speaker, about 300 hours of listening for easy native videos on familiar topics, and about 1,000 for native content to feel comfortable. It varies from person to person, and a language close to one you already speak goes faster.

All 105 languages · How many hours of input · Immersion trackers compared