Mastering Spanish
About how long will it take someone to master spanish? I really want to be fluent with it soon.
2 Answers
This question is asked pretty often, so if you search the forum you'll find many threads. It all depends on how you define fluent, how hard you work at it, and how good you are at learning languages. Shooting from the hip I usually say it'lll take the average person who puts the average amount of work into it somewhere between 1-2 years to hold a basic conversation. Fluency will take longer than that, approaching a lifetime in many cases, like mine.
It depends on many factors. I've seen people coming to Spain to a good academy where they had intensive courses, and some people were fluent enough to maintain a conversation without stopping, and able to writing short essays almost without mistakes in a few months, and they were almost native-like after one year, but they were very dedicated and avoided using their native tongues at all cost, while studying and practising all the time. Some people with less time to practice (who can't afford to do it full time), and less dedication and motivation will probably need several years.
Apparently, it takes an average of 600 hours or less for an English native speaker to learn Spanish, but if you learn a bit one day, and you leave it for a week or more before trying again, this number could be much much higher. If you dedicate 5 hours a week, you'll need, according to the FSI, 120 weeks, which is about two and a half years, but in practice you'll need more unless you practice more often and the method is appropriate.
