A new study claims that learning Spanish is both cost- and time-effective

GOOD news for expats on the Costa del Sol looking for cultural immersion: Spanish ranks as the third cheapest language for Brits to learn.

Spanish also shares the title for the fastest track to fluency with seven other European languages: Portuguese, Swedish, Romanian, Italian, Danish, French and Dutch.

The study, performed by Voucherbox, an online coupon site, surveyed paid language-learning classes across 28 different languages and compiled the average time to fluency and the average cost per hour.

According to their results, a person can achieve fluency in Spanish with 600 hours of study, at €12.01 per hour, for a total cost of €7206 for fluency.

Spanish came behind Portuguese at number two and, surprisingly, Indonesian at number one.

Though fluency in Indonesian takes an additional 200 hours of study, it only costs €7.43 per hour.