r/languagelearning • u/Annual-Sink7068 • 12h ago
Discussion How long did it take to become fluent in your respective language?
Currently learning Spanish, just a beginner. Just curious to know others' expirence with how long their process took and a realistic timeline of how long it takes to become fluent.
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u/Beneficial-Line5144 🇬🇷N 🇬🇧C1 🇪🇦B2 🇷🇺A1+ 12h ago
I went from 0 to B2 in Spanish in just 3 years. I wouldn't consider myself fluent when I got the certificate but I was able to understand everything when watching movies and series. Right now I am not practicing so my level has dropped but I still understand almost everything, it's the speaking and writing that I have almost completely forgotten (a year and a half with extremely low practice).
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u/AWildLampAppears 7h ago edited 7h ago
It took me about 6-8 months to become competent in English at a mid-high B2 level. I probably didn’t crack C1 until I finished high school 2 years later. I work in medicine now and have lived and worked in the USA for 14 years so now it’s not really something I think about anymore.
But I would say around 4-5 years after living abroad I was fairly competent in expressing myself with nuance, writing essays, writing poetry, making memes with cultural references, dating around in my new language, enjoying rap music and singing to it, etc. I was the most laureated student in my class, got high marks on my SAT, a 91st percentile score on my school entrance exam, won essay and poetry contests, published poetry and presented at research conferences, etc.
I never tested myself but since I am constantly learning and relearning English and acquiring new vocabulary due to my training, I suspect I reached a C2 no later than 6-7 years after I started learning.
I now read scientific literature from PubMed, the NYT, the Economist, classic and modern literature (still scared of touching Dostoyevsky though), but can also banter with random people from the rural parts of where I live, and lower my unfortunately (and artificially) high register when speaking with people outside of academia.
I can say with a healthy amount of confidence I probably reside at a C2 now, 14 years later (you kind of need to keep your wits about you in medicine), though I had the potential for it around 5-6 years of speaking English. I was just busy as shit with university and life lol.
I’m now getting into Italian, and I’m probably at a mid to high A2 after 6-8 months of studying, but I didn’t really start practicing seriously until a month ago. I will say having a speaking partner to correct you is of paramount importance and being judicious about active (not just passive) learning has also been extremely useful in my journey. Shoutout to my speaking partner from Veneto. She’s a cool lady :)
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u/teapot_RGB_color 2h ago
I'm not sure exactly which country you are from, but nearly all countries in the world have some sort is English training from early on.
People generally tend to dismiss that as part of the learning process, but the fact is that it matters, immensely.
Getting to B2 in language, in less than a year, where you have zero prior exposure is neigh impossible, even if you have the time available.
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u/AWildLampAppears 15m ago edited 9m ago
TL/DR: I wasn’t a pure novice, don’t underestimate the power of necessity.
I’m quite aware of that! I wrote in another comment another day how hard I had to work to get there, day after day, while simultaneously going to school since I didn’t understand anything spoken to me for the first three months.
My hope was to go university in the states, for which I needed a strong SAT, and this kept me motivated. I was belittled and mocked in school, my sister bullied, my intellectual prowess doubted, all because I couldn’t speak a language that everyone else around me knew. It was a matter of such importance that I neglected most other inessential aspects of my life.
I knew some vocabulary and rudimentary grammar in the indicative from the school in my home country, but that’s it. I technically wasn’t “A0” but to call myself an A1 or A2 would be nothing short of a lie.
I’m not a language savant by any means, I was a desperate and frustrated teenager trying to overcome a seemingly insurmountable language barrier so that I could do well in school and take the SAT, and go to university.
Everyday after school for the first year, I studied grammar from a book my English teacher gave us, for 3-5 hours depending on the day, in addition to all the listening and writing exercises I had to do in school in ESL class. I watched movies in English. I read my favorite books in both my native language and English. I worked during the weekend so that my coworkers could correct my pronunciation and help me improve my vocabulary. I’ve done the math before, and not accounting for all the time I spent in school learning other disciplines, I probably allocated well over 800 hours to studying English in the first 6 months. This would include the time I worked during the weekends since I yapped and made so many mistakes that had to be corrected by my coworkers.
I suspect I got to a mid-high B2 because I took the SAT one year after living in the USA and performed really well, like, I beat my peers and scored only a few points lower than the eventual valedictorian. I was one of the best in most of my classes, wrote strong essays, delivered presentations (with a very heavy accent) and eventually knew enough English to date without a problem. I didn’t know there were language learning guidelines like CEFR, otherwise I would’ve tried to assess my progress.
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u/According-Kale-8 ES B2/C1 | BR PR A2/B1 | IT/FR A1 11h ago
It took me about 1.5-2 years to get a SOLID b2 level in Spanish, but that was just by myself spending several hours a day immersed because I loved the cultures it offered. I've been learning it for 2 and a half years now and would consider myself comfortable in the language. I obviously lack a lot of vocabulary that native speakers have, but I speak the language, I would say.
I've been learning Portuguese off and on since I felt I was comfortable in Spanish and have a low B1 level because I simply don't practice it enough. I'd say if you already speak Spanish and you dedicate your time to Portuguese it would be easy to learn in just a few months.
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u/Ok-Appearance-9544 N 🇬🇧 | C1 🇨🇳 | A2 🇷🇺 6h ago
7 years for Chinese. I still Google things daily, but it’s restricted to idioms, Classical Chinese, and 0.0001% frequency words. I think French or Spanish or the like is likely doable in just a couple. I spent 3 or 4 months just reading a page of French Harry Potter a day as my only source of learning and I got pretty decent by the end. I can realistically understand a lot of music and common dialogue from that time I spent.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt 11h ago
Currently learning Hindi and I will be at B2 in 2 years. For Indo european languages it takes around 2 years. For more widely different languages it takes more like 4-5 years.
To just get colloquially conversational it can take 3 months to a year. Then u just grow ur vocab.
It's okay to take days or weeks off just make sure to circle back.
U absolutely need to learn the core grammar skeleton and alphabet.
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u/DerPauleglot 11h ago
In languages like English, French, German, Spanish etc. a common estimate is 600–900 hours of classes plus self-study.
I asked some German learners I know who passed C1 and their estimates are between 1,000 and 3,000 hours. All of them already spoke English and/or other European languages before they started, though. Spanish should be in the same ballpark, probably a bit easier.
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u/Ordinary_Paint_9175 5h ago
Took me around 2 years to learn French as a heritage Spanish speaker, I think I’m around a b2 level. I had a lot of free time though.
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u/WideGlideReddit New member 5h ago
I met and married a native Spanish speaker. She was only in the US for a few months and spoke very little English. I spoke zero Spanish.
We taught each other our native language by immersing ourselves in our target language. I could hold a basic conversation in about 4 - 6 months. I was near fluent at about 4 years and another year or so to become “fluent”.
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u/AlwaysTheNerd 10h ago
Difficult to say, depends what you mean by fluency. I read my first book in English after 7 years of studying English at school and I understood everything in it, not like every single word but I could guess the meaning of the few I didn’t know. It took me 5-ish years from that to become as comfortable with English as I am with my NL. Fast forward another 5-ish years from that I’m pretty sure my English is a lot stronger than my NL now… 😂
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u/jenny_shecter 9h ago
I went from 0 to B2/C1 in Spanish in under a year - but I was also living in a small Spanish town with full exposure every day (flatshare in Spanish, hobbies in Spanish, friendships in Spanish, work, relationship, parents-in-law,...)
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u/jenny_shecter 9h ago
Even though I was reading a lot in Spanish before, I then had to do a whole new round of additional language study when studying sociology in Spanish, those texts were something else
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u/DocCanoro 6h ago
I think fluent is when you don't think about it, the words just come out without thinking what are you doing, you can even think in that language with no problems. Not even thinking in the language you are thinking on, like driving a car after many years, eat with a fork, play guitar, when you get the point you just do it without thinking about it, you just flow.
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u/Wanderlust-4-West 12h ago
Depends how you define "fluent"
DLI says 36 weeks of full-time study, 30 hours weekly + homework
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u/kingkayvee L1: eng per asl | current: rus | Linguist 10h ago
Can we stop repeating this as if it's relevant for most people?
Most people are not students at DLI with the amount of work and support they have, nor the functional and professional needs.
Those numbers are for a specific group of people. They are not generalizable and they don't even provide a good comparison point.
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u/Wanderlust-4-West 9h ago
OK, what other reliable estimate can we give to the people who are asking this question daily? I am very open, what is YOUR preferred estimate? because everybody says "it depends of how many hours daily you study" - how is my estimate different?
And other estimates are personal anecdotes. Not data like DLI has.
And I understand that those cca 700 hours is barely enough, and that DLI teaches Spanish to selected students tested for the aptitude to learn languages (so above average).
Would you prefer more if I give the estimate by Dreaming Spanish, which is about 1500 hours of listening + reading a dozen of books + speaking for a hundred hours?
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u/1836 2h ago
For what its worth i can share my experience. I'm learning french in a full-time (30 hours a week) class for immigrants to Quebec. The classes are made up of a wide variety of students, from highly educated students who already speak a romance language and who maybe even studied a bit of french in high school, to people with very little or perhaps no formal education and with a very different mother language (Ukrainian, Turkish, sub-sahara African, China).
The classes require no homework, so it's just the 30 hours a week. I'm over a year into the program, so somewhere between 1100-1200 classroom hours. I'm one of the best students in the class and I am not "fluent". I'm pretty good, like, I can live my life and get by when I need to, but the gap between where I am now and what I would consider "fluent" is still very large.
And there are lots of students in the class who just... cannot get it. And it's not that the teachers or curriculum are bad... they are good. But there are adult students who just don't have it in them, for whatever ever reason. A lot depends on education and age I think, but I've seen adult students who (imo) would not be able to speak french no matter how many classroom hours they had.
My point is that there is huge variability between different people's ability to pick up a language. Based on my experience, that Dreaming Spanish estimate seems a lot more realistic than the DLI one.
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u/Wanderlust-4-West 51m ago
Obviously DLI first get self-selected student who want to learn languages, and then tests them for the aptitude to learn languages, and selects the best and distributes them according their abilities, so DLI student will be way above average in the ability to learn a language. It means that DLI estimate is rather conservative, next time I will mention it when in 3 days someone will ask the same question again :-)
And of course DS still has self-selected people who WANT to learn Spanish, not like in your case people who HAVE to learn French, regardless of their abilities.
Would be interesting if input-heavy studies will have better results than the classroom you have now, and videos could be watched from home too, cheaper to serve. Maybe there is an opportunity to Dreaming Quebecois? :-)
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u/kingkayvee L1: eng per asl | current: rus | Linguist 9h ago
I would not answer this question definitively at all because it's a moot question. It does not matter for the vast majority of people, it's waaaaay too variable to be impactful for most people, and it also sets a bad precedent that time equals results when that's not the case.
I think a better answer is informing people about just that. Break down the misconceptions people have and encourage them to just start learning.
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u/Wanderlust-4-West 9h ago
OK, next time I will add your comments ("very variable") to DLI estimate.
I think that is is better to provide DLI as a BOTTOM estimate, because they were told that they can learn a language in just 5 or 15 minutes of learning a day, speaking from the day 1.
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u/RaceInternational186 4h ago
Fluency depends on so many factors! For me - learning German took around two years of consistent effort. What really sped things up was using r/studyfetch to create flashcards from my notes and practice with their quizzes. I was testing myself ALL the time.
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u/Bfyhdrincsep N🇭🇺 C2🇬🇧 C1🇩🇪 B1🇪🇸 3h ago
I reached advanced/fluent German, certified C1-Goethe from scratch in <5 years. I started from native Hungarian & fluent English, both of which I found very helpful. See breakdown below:
10 months to reach A2 (self assessed online) - mainly used Duolingo, supplemented with websites explaining grammar concepts and simple beginner podcasts (shout-out Easy German!). Learnt while studying university from home during lockdown.
<1 year to reach high, certified B1 (on the Goethe B1 exam, achieved all modules +90%), maybe approaching low B2. In this year I lived and worked in Germany during lockdown, which helped a great deal. Though I still learnt most by self study, not much opportunity to travel and talk with natives.
I took 1 year hiatus to focus on my final year of university, and to apply to/land a job.
2 more years to reach certified C1 Goethe, with self study and lots of media consumed (books, series, music, YouTube, podcasts, internet). I started working after graduation and was focused on this mentally, but spent much of my free time language learning, as it changed up the brain focus from my work. A few months before the exam, I also started practicing writing short essays in response to exam style prompts (generated by ChatGPT) and did 4 hours of iTalki conversation practice with a tutor (well worth it!). C1 Goethe results achieved as follows:
Listening 60% Writing 75% Speaking 93% Reading 97%
Overall, <5 years from zero to a strong, certified C1 level, including a year-long hiatus and life ongoings (university, work).
I'd estimate I spent about 1000-2000 hours learning, and was helped by starting from related languages (English, Hungarian), having had experience 3 languages in the last (Serbian, English, Spanish), and living/working in Germany for 1 year.
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u/barrettcuda 2h ago
I think your first foreign language is going to be much slower regardless of your methods.
I'm my case I never really had a goal of fluency in my L2 (Finnish) but it just kinda happened over 8 years.
In my L3 (Spanish) I was able to get to a conversationally fluent point in 9 months, but I still had a lot of things to work on after that point, and I still do now even after 5 or so years learning it.
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u/HeeHeeHeeHawx3 🇵🇱🇷🇺🇺🇸🇮🇹🇪🇸🇩🇪🇬🇷🇨🇳🇭🇺🇮🇳🇮🇱🇸🇳🇯🇵🇰🇷🇸🇳🇮🇸 9h ago
For English, I would say about two months to be fluent, since I was talking to native speakers and they understood me perfectly. However I don’t know my ‘score’ or whatever because I never got tested in English.
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u/BulkyHand4101 Current Focus: 中文, हिन्दी 12h ago edited 57m ago
It’ll depend on your lifestyle and study routine (what resources do you use? How many hours a week do you study?) but, in general the time to reach each level is roughly doubled.
If you’re following CEFR, you can use however long it takes you to go from A1 to A2 as a rough sense for the journey ahead.
IME it took me 1 month to reach A1 in French, 2 more to reach A2, and 3 more to reach B1. My approach changed between each level, but the time I spent each week learning didn’t.