Japanese

[shooraijin]

Depends on how intensely you're studying. I have enough Japanese to read some simple things, and understand about 10-20% of what I watch. I've been studying it on a purely amateur basis for a couple of years, but nothing intensive or on a regular basis. For Spanish, for me to achieve good fluency took me about four to six years of high school and college courses (it's now good enough that I can speak to patients in Spanish and do most patient visits without help).

[Mithrandir]

Well, I'm not quite on the same level as Shooby, but I'm working toward it. I took one semester of Japanese last quarter, and I'm taking another now. I know all the hiragana/katakana - and 1 or 2 kanji. I'd say I can understand the "Single word / Short sentence" phrases in anime. I can't really read Manga yet - as I don't know most of the kanji. And it's not a 1 to 1 correspondence, either. In japanese, words all all run together. This is rather confusing. For example, take the sentence "Godisnowhere." That can come out to VERY different ways depending on where you put the spaces...

But don't let that trouble you. I enjoy learning Japanese just for the sake of learning Japanese. The culture bits I get out of my class are very enlightening - but I do most of my learning outside of class.

So like shooby said, it depends on how interested/dedicated you are. If you REALLY want to do this, and you study REALLY hard, you'll probably be able to read somethings in a year or two. If you are prone to lazyness (not a bad thing, per se), or tend to start lots of projects and then not finish them unless you are threatened - it could take you a little longer.

[shooraijin]

Thread bumped.

[Mr. Rogers]

I've been using YesJapan now for a few weeks and I think it's the best place to learn Japanese. You have to pay for it monthly, but it is more than worth it. There's tons of sound samples and you can ask the teachers questions. They also have a weekly show that teaches you alot too. If your gonna learn Japanese then go there.