Nonnative spanish speakers: how long did it take you to become fluent in spanish ?
I recently have decided to put spanish as one of my top priorities but sometimes it feels like I'm waisting my time. I took spanish for 4 1/2 years in school( middle and high school) so I knew the basics when I decided to actually try to master it, but then I thought about it, I took spanish for that long and can barely hold a two minute conversation or can barely understand anything on Telemundo ( I can read it better than I can speak or listen to it, does that apply to you as well?) my questions is for those of you whose native language isn't spanish How long did it take you to master spanish? I don't want to give up because it's important to me but I'm losing hope.
11 Answers
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If you need help to understand better, i can help you.
I can assure you that you can get a "comfortable" level of fluency in 2 or 3 years, if you do as instructed, not what you think you need. 
Ah, there is no money involved!
The rest of my life and then some. jajaja. BTW, I have been living in Mexico for 7 years and still have a ton to learn. It is a never ending process.
I am just glad to be conversational, fluent is a bar too high for me to ever achieve.
Reading and writing is easier than speaking and hearing because you have more time to analyze what you are reading or writing. Speaking and hearing happen full speed and so are 100 times more difficult.
You say you have 4 1/2 years of Spanish schooling. I ask how is your vocabulary. The stronger your vocabulary the easier speaking and especially hearing become. You need vocabulary to break the stream of sounds into words.
I find that TV is often very rapid and hard to understand. Look for podcasts and a Skype partner or native speaker close to your home that you can have daily interaction with.
I've read that it takes a native-English speaker about three years of immersion in a Spanish-speaking environment to attain comfortable proficiency in Spanish (not native fluency), although this can be reduced to as little as two years if the learner is already proficient in another Romance language.
If you're not immersed, then I guess it'll probably take longer. I learned French at school, starting at about age ten, and when I was 19 I studied in France for a year after which I would say I felt comfortable (well, comfortable enough to graduate from a French uni with the equivalent of the DEUG (Diplôme d'études universitaires générales)), so for me that journey took ten years.
It also depends on what you mean by 'fluent'. In a sense the higher your level of proficiency in your native language, the greater might be your expectation for yourself in your target language.
I have a Bulgarian friend who has lived in the UK for a decade, and who speaks English to a very high standard, yet she still complains that she occasionally feels out of her depth in some social situations when surrounded by native-English speakers, particularly if they are speaking in an accent/dialect with which she is not familiar.
The more time you spend learning, the faster you will learn, and the more languages you learn, the easier you will pick up new languages. I've read that the process of learning a new language exercises a particular part of the brain (which is a different part from that which native-speakers of that language use for speaking it !!). The more you exercise this part of the brain, the more powerful it becomes. Thus 'super-polyglots' (folk who speak 5/6+ languages) seem to be able to learn additional languages much more quickly.
Ultimately, though, for most folk it's a long, hard slog, so the more ways you can find to make it fun and enjoyable, the better... 
I am just glad to be conversational,
This is a good point. If you can converse and make your feelings known and understand someone else´s feelings when told to you, is this not fluency at least to a certain point?
In the case of a child who speaks just one language, he still has a small vocabulary and makes grammar mistakes but is fluent in his only language. I think fluency is a relative term. Fluency is understanding the feelings that one causes the listener when speaking certain words, phrases, entonations, etc.
Of course language and culture cannot be separated, so I doubt that total fluency can be achieved without living within the culture of the country of the language being studied.
This question is not as straight-forward as you would think.
In order to answer your question you first have to define what "fluency" is. And good luck getting people to agree on that one.
I think the answer to that question should also include how much time and effort a person put into achieving "fluency" as well as what their environment was. Did they live in a Spanish speaking country? Did they have a lot Spanish speaking friends and/or family? Or did they have to struggle to find someone to talk to? All of that and more makes a huge difference on how long it takes to achieve "fluency".
Now that I've finished my long winded speech let me answer your question.
My learning process was mostly solo, books, audio courses, podcasts, regular but not frequent travel, not a lot of access to native Spanish speakers and I put in 1-3 hours a day, with maybe a total of 2-3 hours of actual speaking practice a week, but that varied from week to week.
I'd say it took me a good 5 years to reach a solid conversational level and at the 8 year mark I would say I achieved some level of "fluency", and I just continue to improve, a process which will never end.
I will let you know if I ever get that far, assuming I live long enough..
I will tell you when I find out.
Te diré cuando llegue a ese nivel. 
I believe that there are different degrees of fluency or rather different stages in the journey towards fluency, like there when a young child is learning to speak a second language which also applies to learning their native language or mother tongue.
Like the vast majority of other non-native Spanish speakers here I am aiming towards fluency ...I haven't arrived yet! I have been learning it here for just over 5 years! I don't measure my success in learning Spanish, or any other language that I'm learning, simply in terms of how long it has taken me/ takes me to reach that elusive goal called fluency otherwise I might easily have reason to become discouraged or give up!
I haven't been learning Spanish continuously since I left secondary (high) school where I had the chance to learn it with a native speaker for about 1 year ..I have had breaks for one reason or another, nevertheless, I have persevered! My native teacher recently confirmed during my last lesson that my level is HIgh intermedaite (B2) in most areas: Speaking, writing, and reading Spanish and low intermediate in comprehension.(B1) but hopefully I will continue to advance closer towards total fluency with time, effort and much more practice!
I used to confuse fluency with having an extensive vocabulary and while it is usually true that competent adult native speakers of most world languages have built up a very large vocabulary base through constant practice ....this is not the same as fluency!
If you need a visual.aid to picture fluency, think of a river with a current which flows at a moderate pace (the exact speed is not relevant to my analogy) fluency is about the ability to think in and speak the language you are learning in a real life situation at a conversational pace, without first reverting to thinking in, and translating from, your native language into that second language , which is Spanish for the purposes of this discussion.
Fluency is ideally more easily, naturally and effectively achieved through a ^real-life' immersion experience of living in a country among natives who are continually speaking the language around you that you are trying to learn, and where you have no option to revert to your mother tongue because the natives do not speak it! This ultimately forces you to think, and speak only in the new language and more rapid progress is made!
I have just been explaining the ideal immersion experience but many of us do not have the option to do that in life so we have to settle for other alternatives. I take Spanish classes once a week with a young native teacher from Spain and this, in my experience, is the next best option unless you have the opportunity to take an immersion course in your chosen language within your own country. These types of courses are more available in countries outside the UK, like some parts of French speaking Canada offer immersion courses for young children in French ...although this may also be a mandatory requirement of state education.
I hope this helps
I would say around 3 years. My friend lived in Mexico and she came over to the US everyday for school. She did not know any English at all. Within the week of being at the completely English school she started to understand many words and she said that within years she knew the language pretty well. And that is being around only English speakers all day for those years.
I'm going to say five years in my case. I completed five years of high school "book-leaning in three years. My American teacher was a stickler for grammar and pronunciation (Castilian) After high school I went to Mexico to study. I purposely avoided English speakers, which more or less forced me to get along with conversational Spanish. I had a strong grammar base and always carried a dictionary with me for those words that I couldn't express in a round-about way. It took me about three months to feel comfortable and another three to become confident. I was extremely proud to win my fair share of Spanish Scrabble® games with native speakers.
I have strayed from the pure Castilian. I regularly talk with my Latino friends, listen to internet radio, read newspapers and novels, etc. Most of my conversational Spanish is with Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Colombians. i also talk to myself.
The best way to learn and become fluent is to increase your vocabulary and listen. If there is one word that you don't know, it can mess up your understanding of the rest of the spoken sentence. That's my feeling.
Well, for me, I grew up with it since my family is Puerto Rican/ Colombian, so listening to it from two different cultures and accents helped a lot. Still, growing up as a kid, I could not talk to my aunts and uncles, grandparents or most of my relatives, because I was raised speaking, reading and writing in English. I started actually learning Spanish in middle school like most of my classmates did. But I began to take it seriously in high school, freshman year. It was the only class I enjoyed, and I even became a TA for most of the Spanish teachers throughout my four years of school; which helped me sit in on more Spanish lessons, review old vocab, and get more intel from different teachers. Shortly, I took French, fell in love with that, and decided to pursue both French and Spanish education. Of course, my Spanish is stronger, but I can get by a decent amount of French. In college, I became a Spanish major, and started tutoring intermediate Spanish, which helped a lot. However, what really took me from intermediate to advanced was when I began my Spanish courses in college. After the intermediate stuff, you take more focused courses: Translation, Spanish Literature, Spanish Conversation, Spanish Civilization, Hispanic/ Latino Film, etc. All of these courses really take you to a whole new level of applying what you know already and mixing it with brand new material. If I am being honest, even after 8 years and then some, I still have much to learn. I cannot tell you how much of the language there is to learn from all of the different regions that speak the language, from different time periods, and different writing styles, and different expressions. Just like your English is always growing as does your second or third language. So, sadly, if you really want to be "fluent" in Spanish, you just have to learn as much as you can from either natives, teachers, books and films, etc. Just know that this is a lifetime commitment. You have to be constantly studying to learn new material that may not always be presented in everyday conversation, and you have to refer to the previous material you knew, but "forgot". It's not easy, especially applying grammar to a conversation with a native speaker. It's tough, and most of the time you'll try to pull your hair out, scream and be so afraid to talk to Natives ever again, but it's all helpful in the learning process. Then, when an English speaker is having trouble talking to a Spanish speaker, and you're there to help translate or teach, it's very rewarding. Just be patient, and know that it's going to take as much time as it took to master English, and that it's not a race. Buena suerte 
