Anyone?

Here is an interesting philosophy on the process to look at:
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...o-about-it

It probably depends more on what you consider "learning a language", and that definition to me changes quite a bit.

For me, I would say I have "learned" it when I reach a more or less adult level of fluency (as in, I could function as an adult in the society of my language choice, in my case Japan). That would be my biggest overarching fluency goal at the moment. My second goal would probably be so that I would be at the point where I can do just about everything I can do in English in Japanese without too many issues (so no keeping a dictionary ready to go every time I watch some show chock full of sci-fi terms or something like that).

Finally, I would like to be able to use my 2nd language to learn a 3rd language if possible, thus hopefully strengthening both.

In the end, you don't really want to stop working at improving your 2nd language, especially if you don't live in an area/situation where it's going to be often used. But if you know enough that you can pick up and breeze through a novel in a day then "studying" will likely be more along the lines of "playing or chatting".

At least that's my viewpoint.

In regards to how long that takes, it mostly is about how effort and time you put into it. Doing 5 good hours of studying will likely get you there faster than 2 bad hours

How long it takes depends on which language you already speak and which language you are trying to learn.

Assuming you are a native speaker of English, you might want to look into how long it typically takes US diplomats at the Department of State to learn languages to a professional level. Your mileage may vary but it gives you a rough idea of the investment in time required to learn a language.

http://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks...h_Speakers

Warning: no definitive answer here. Just rambling and some personal anecdotes lol.

The first obvious question is to what level?

You can get to a good conversational level within a year. I'm currently at 5+ years, taking regular uni classes all in Japanese, reading and writing academic essays in Japanese, etc. This must be considered "fluent". I'm sure this level could be reached much faster than I did.

How about how long to get to "native level" though? Well, in some ways this is a vague term. What kind of native speaker are we comparing to? What skills are included? For example 中学生 are native speakers and I'm sure I could read far more difficult texts than most of them. On the other hand, they will have a "better" accent than me for example.

One way, which I personally like, is to compare yourself to your native speaker equivalent so-to-speak. So in my case, a native Japanese undergrad student, social science major. Well, I see lots of them in my classes and I certainly have a way to go to catch up to them in all aspects of Japanese ability.

I can't give you an exact answer (no one can), but you can expect to study for years. You can be barely functional in a year or so if you study hard; you can survive as a tourist doing touristy things in several months; but to function as an adult in the country will probably require five or so good years of studying and living the language, depending on how similar the language you're learning is to your own language.

That's an estimate from someone who can't actually function as an adult though, so don't take it to seriously. Personally, I've been working on vocab for about two years; before that, I did RTK over about four months; before that, I dabbled with the language and spent two weeks learning the kana. To give you an idea, all of that has allowed me to read easy books and get through all but the most advanced news articles (I've been working on that though).
However, this may be different for you, since I spent almost no time practicing production; I put all my effort into reading, so I'm seeing results from it. You could probably become a functional speaker in the same time frame, but would probably nearly illiterate. (once again, I wouldn't know for sure, since I can barely speak, save for a few set phrases and simple sentences)

This is not to discourage you at all though; recently there's been some posts with information about the approximate range of vocabulary for various levels of school. It's being used to smack some reality into people boasting about their vocabulary (at least, that's how it seems to me), by showing that those who've completed Core 10k are only at the lower levels of elementary school. However, it took those elementary school kids six or seven years to get to that point, when it will only take me between two and three years to reach that (I'm about 3k away; even a leisurely pace will have me finished in less than half a year). Granted, those kids can speak way better than I can, but considering I've barely practiced it, it's to be expected.

So yeah, learn a language; so long as you have something you want to do with it, it's a fun (but challenging) adventure.

By the way, I'm one of the slower members of this forum; there are people that got to this point way faster than I have.

Similar to the way Thoreau denied government/taxes and sought true livin',
We don't learn a language, we live it
After studying a fair amount, if we progress in the language we'll most likely continue to learn new words and have new experiences

L2L:

40,000 hours (at least).

mc962 Wrote:Finally, I would like to be able to use my 2nd language to learn a 3rd language if possible, thus hopefully strengthening both.

I'd love to try this.

note: I like learning so I'm not really trying to be impatient.

kitakitsune Wrote:http://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks...h_Speakers

Oh, they put an asterisk next to all the languages I'm interested in. ...Oh wait, that's for "typically somewhat more difficult for native English speakers to learn" lol.

tashippy Wrote:How long does it take to learn a language?

Ninety seconds a minute.

It takes basically forever.

I am a native speaker of English. I took the GRE when I graduated university. I scored in the ninety-ninth percentile for vocabulary and writing. If you're not sure what the GRE is, it's a post-graduate test intended for placement/qualification in graduate programs at the MA and PhD level. Scoring in the ninety-ninth percentile means my English is better than 99% of college graduates with aspirations to attend graduate school.

I still consider myself to be learning English. I still bump into words I don't know. So to answer your question: A lifetime.

Depends on the person, language, time spent on it every day, and your definition of "learned". Anywhere between three months and 5 years.

afterglowefx Wrote:I am a native speaker of English. I took the GRE when I graduated university. I scored in the ninety-ninth percentile for vocabulary and writing. If you're not sure what the GRE is, it's a post-graduate test intended for placement/qualification in graduate programs at the MA and PhD level. Scoring in the ninety-ninth percentile means my English is better than 99% of college graduates with aspirations to attend graduate school.

I still consider myself to be learning English. I still bump into words I don't know. So to answer your question: A lifetime.

I seriously doubt that's what OP was asking. You can define anything to be unattainable, but there's not much point in doing that.

The written English language alone has over 1 million words, for instance. No one can learn that many words. Google only recently figured out how to even find them all. It makes no sense to define an "English speaker" as someone who knows all those words. It makes far more sense to define it as someone who can pass themselves off as a native speaker, or someone who can at least communicate well in most contexts, etc.

Still, until OP nails down the definition, and tells us some other things about himself and what his target language is, it would be hard to give a very precise answer. Doesn't mean we should just answer with purposeful equivocations.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Depends on the person, language, time spent on it every day, and your definition of "learned". Anywhere between three months and 5 years.

You're way too optimistic. Not only is three months pretty much impossible (except for in languages that are nearly identical, or pidgin languages), but five years is shorter than average for a lot of languages (like for native English speakers learning Japanese).

Stansfield123 Wrote:Still, until OP nails down the definition, and tells us some other things about himself and what his target language is, it would be hard to give a very precise answer. Doesn't mean we should just answer with purposeful equivocations.

If OP had rephrased his question I would certainly have answered differently. However, I feel my response was quite appropriate to the question. I mean really (and as you and several other people have pointed out in this thread), at what point does one 'learn' a language? I'm not being equivocal, I'm being realistic. To learn something is to know it entirely. I guess I'm being overly pedantic.

Let's see if OP comes back and refines what he meant. Not that I'm really qualified to answer.

It doesn't make any sense to have a conversation like this without defining your terms. "Having learned" a language is very vague. It makes much more sense to talk about specific, well-defined levels of proficiency. I personally like the ILR scale. You can take a look at the descriptions of the various levels here.

According to Achieving Native-like Second Language Proficiency by Betty Lou Leaver, which I highly recommend, it takes between 1320 to 2760 hours of instruction to reach level 3 on the ILR scale, or "General Professional Proficiency." Japanese would of course fall into the high end of that range, since it is more difficult than most for native English speakers.

Level 4 proficiency, or "Advanced Professional Proficiency," which Leaver defines as "near-native," apparently takes 17 years to attain on average. Given a program of instruction especially tailored to the goal of reaching that level, that average drops to 5 years.

Level 5 is functionally equivalent to a well-educated native speaker in all respects, which few people ever reach in any language because of the time and sustained effort it takes. Not that it's impossible, of course, but for most people it is impractical and unnecessary to reach such a level.

For reference, I'm a professional (freelance) Chinese to English translator, and I'm doing a master's degree in one of the top Chinese literature departments in Taiwan, and I'm probably a 3+ in all four areas (reading/writing/listening/speaking, though I may be only a 3 in speaking) after 2.5 years of living and studying in-country. I don't know anyone else who has reached a similar level in Chinese as quickly as I have, though I'm sure they're out there. I'll be trying to repeat myself with Japanese when I move to Tokyo this fall, though also having to maintain and hopefully even improve my Chinese will likely make that difficult.

tiantian Wrote:

mc962 Wrote:Finally, I would like to be able to use my 2nd language to learn a 3rd language if possible, thus hopefully strengthening both.

I'd love to try this.

I'm doing this. I'm using English to learn Japanese. ;-P

Since the fact that there are different levels of language proficiency as already been discussed, I would add that it also depends a lot on the time investment that the single study can afford (and on the study method... and on the student himself).

I'm getting a Master in Bioengineering, most days I'm not able to Japanese study more than 2-3 hours (less in the period when there are exams, more right afterwards). I plan to go to Yamasa this summer, in their most intensive program (6 hours a day) and try my best to study also outside of the classroom. I'm quite sure that in 2 months there I'll do a lot more progress than in last two months (even if I learned lots of things in the last 2 months).

From what I've read about other people's experiences, learning a language takes between 2-5 years of dedicated effort. Most of that long stretch of time, however, boils down to time spent actually learning, reviewing, practicing, and immersing in said language, which can be reduced to actual hours spent doing those things.

So most likely someone who spends 8 hours a day learning a language everyday might learn the language more quickly than someone who spends only a couple hours every other day learning the language.

It's like how someone who practices martial arts will advance to a higher belt the more times they attend classes and practice at home, versus the person who only attends class once a week for an hour and only practices while in class.

Maybe 3 years of dedicated self study (plus college classes if that route's taken) and 2 years in Japan to become relatively fluent (just a guess).

Thanks for taking the bait, ya'll.
Buonaparte answered correctly.
Bflatnine thanks for the elaboration and definition.

tashippy Wrote:Thanks for taking the bait, ya'll.
Buonaparte answered correctly.
Bflatnine thanks for the elaboration and definition.

I guess it would help to look at who you're replying to, would it? Only just realized that I wasn't talking to a new member...

Tzadeck Wrote:You're way too optimistic. Not only is three months pretty much impossible (except for in languages that are nearly identical, or pidgin languages), but five years is shorter than average for a lot of languages (like for native English speakers learning Japanese).

Three months has a lot of hours in it. One can spend about 600 hours studying (6 hours/day, not unheard of) and several hundred more reading and listening.

I think that would take an English speaker quite far in French, or a Spanish speaker in Portuguese or Italian, etc.

Foreign Service Institute Wrote:The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for a number of languages based on the length of time it takes to achieve Speaking 3: General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3) and Reading 3: General Professional Proficiency in Reading (R3) ... They study in small classes of no more than six. Their schedule calls for 25 hours of class per week with three or four hours per day of directed self-study.

I've made a simple formula to calculate how many hours of daily study is needed to reach FSI/ILR level 3 proficiency. Skip to the bolded parts if you just want the formula and an example without any explanation.

First, I'll note that although I use FSI's figures, level 3 proficiency for both FSI and ILR roughly correspond (refer to kitakitsune's and bflatnine's posts for more info on these two metrics). Therefore, I think the FSI's figures can be applied to their corresponding ILR levels. Anyway, on to the numbers.

According to the FSI, reaching level 3 in Japanese through their program requires approximately 2200 class hours over 88 weeks. Although the FSI estimates 3-4 hours of daily self-study (in additional to the class hours), to be safe, let's assume 4 hours of daily self-study, which totals 2,464 hours over the 88 weeks. So, with class and self-study combined, it should take 4,664 hours to reach level 3 proficiency.

With this data, we can make a simple formula to see how many hours of daily study is necessary to reach level 3 proficiency:

4,664 hours = hours of daily study * (365n)
Let n = number of years
(of course, 365=the number of days in a year and 4,664=the number of hours needed to reach level 3 proficiency)

In more quantitative terms, it'd look like this:

4,664 = h(365n)

All we have to do is specify the number of years, n, and then solve for h, which will show us how many hours of daily study is needed.

For example, if we let n=5, then h=~2.56. Therefore, one could expect to reach level 3 proficiency in 5 years with about a little over 2.5 hours of daily study. If we let n=3, then h=~4.26, and so reaching level 3 would take 3 years of studying about 4 hours and 15 minutes every day.

I hope you find this helpful for crafting a realistic study plan.

P.S. I realize the formula doesn't account for leap years. If you really want precision, then you can add 1 to the sum of 365n for every extra day due to a leap year.

Edit: obviously most people aren't going to study every single day. To find out how many hours you'll have to study per week, swap 52 for 365 in the formula above, and then solve for h. This is useful for planning purposes since, if you miss a day or study below the daily estimate, you can figure out exactly how much time you need to make up for.

It also doesn't account for the fact that self-study at home and classroom instruction are not equivalent, and that the FSI is likely one of the most efficient language schools out there, so classroom instruction elsewhere will not be of the same effectiveness as it will there.

That said, I don't think I had anywhere near that number of classroom hours. I think after it was all said and done, I spent about 900 hours in the classroom and maybe 100 with a tutor before I reached level 3 (about the same time I started working as a translator). I worked pretty hard on the side though.