LeifGoodwin:
Yes, I am aware that he had good tutoring situations for Mandarin and Japanese, but I would still like more specific information on how much time he spent and what levels of fluency he reached in that time. And how much of his real fluency came from on-the-job training so to speak.
Fair points. Such information would be of interest. Given my struggles with German, I do suspect some of these polyglots are naturally more capable than average, despite protestations to the contrary.
Thinking about some of the comments about German studies on this post I had Dinner yesterday with a 30-something British diplomat who will be posted abroad in March 2026 and has literally just started to tackle German. He has two online teachers splitting the daily schedule during the week and was going to be one-on-one with them, but has now been joined by a second diplomat needing to learn German. They are working through what appears to be a somewhat old-fashioned textbook with drills and plenty of homework.
As you can imagine, I had a number of suggestions such as daily Assimil, EasyGerman videos, Lingq, the “beginner” book on “German Gender: is it der, die, or das?” by Angelika Davey (which he understandably said was his perplexing initial hurdle), Deutsche Welle, Slow German podcasts and a NordVPN connection to start looking at news and current affairs (where because he is a diplomat he has a very strong background).
What struck me was:
Именно. И зависит от того, как значит «учиться». Мы хотел бы знать как долго нужно, но лучше спрашивать как сильно вы хочешь учиться?
Likewise. I’m pretty sure I’m in the upper half of language learners, but I don’t think I’m anything special.
There are specially gifted language learners, like this now-famous carpet cleaner, who truly do learn languages at the next level.
https://languagehat.com/the-polyglot-carpet-cleaner/
I suspect Steve K and Olly R. may not be at that level but they are strong and they have managed their gifts well.
But that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t learn languages. We are human beings. We are wired from birth to learn languages. It’s a matter of time and motivation.
There are several autistic polyglots including Vaughn who are incredible. And Richard Simcott is in their league i.e able to obtain native like fluency and accent, though he is very modest about his abilities, putting it down to his love for languages. Steve Kaufmann has stated that he aims for clear communication not perfection.
Incidentally, when most of us are asked how good we are at something, such as driving, almost everyone says above average. I’m in the top 5% at maths, that’s proven by exams, but mediocre at sports and language. Hard work can and will compensate, as you suggest.
You’re obviously a bright guy and I have appreciated your comments many times. That said, I wonder whether you’re not assessing your language learning talent too harshly.
What I get out of your comments is that language learning is such a seriously large project that a learner must think in terms of thousands of hours. No quick fixes. That’s my experience too.
You and I have put in thousands of hours. We recognize our progress. We both know there are thousands more for real fluency. We are not deterred.
That alone IMO puts us in the top half of language learners.
I agree. Slowly slowly catchy monkey.
LeifGoodwin et al.:
One of the reasons I posted my “2,000,000 Words Read” topic was to lay down my personal data point.
Perhaps I don’t read the comments here closely enough, but other than from you, I mostly I don’t get a sense of how much time people put into their learning their languages and with what results.
Perhaps my reading 2,000,000 words in 3500+ hours over 2 1/2 years and being able to read 10-20 pages of French fiction per day but little output is a mediocre, even dismal result.
But I doubt it. I suspect this is par for the course, maybe even a bit better.
To answer that very question: I am learning Korean for about 2 years now, using LingQ for most of that time. I have spend ~750 hours in LingQ, read ~1.3 million words and am at a solid B1 level now.
I also do grammar exercises and generally look up grammar regularly as well as translation practices using ChatGPT every now and than. For a while now I’ve been using Morpheem to boost my vocabulary. I have bought a book containing ~9000 words sorted by category, which I gradually add there.
Oh, and of course I binge-watch K-Dramas 
I’m at 2,3 million words read over the course of 8 years. No real idea of how many total hours. Lingq has a “study time” stat since 2023 that shows 892 hours. I have 600+ listening hours. I probably have averaged 15-30 minutes of reading a day throughout most of my progress. I do also occasionally work on Spanish or other languages, but focus is mostly on German. Slow and steady =).
No idea what level I’d put myself at. I can read and understand most of what I read (still a ton of words to learn fully). Listening is ok if there are clear speakers, but with natives speaking, or most tv shows, forget it. With subtitles on I can follow anything for the most part. Speaking…Horrible. I believe I could get by if I have to and can express most things, just not in the detail and accuracy I would like.
I quite like my progress though…it shows that with just a little bit a day you can make a lot of progress. It will take more years to be at the level I want, but it is doable.
I live in the United States where I would ask immigrants often how long it took them to get that good at English (~C1)
My conclusion is ~5years and no more than 10yrs
I think you can use this benchmark with most languages and reach comfort in knowing that if you’re fluent in any less than 5 years, you’re a badass
EDIT: would like to add a few notes about, for example, famous YouTubers
AJATT Matt smashed Japanese for 5 years and Metatron needed 8 years for Japanese
Xiaoma required 3 years for Mandarin and he was in China for like 2 of those years
Norwegian With Ilys smashed it for 2 years up to ~C1
A seasoned language learner should be able to reach their goals with a language in under 5 years unless your language is really really hard. I am 18 months with Bahasa Indonesia and I think it’ll take another 18 months but I’ll let you know!
A very realistic assessment of how long it takes and other truths about learning a language is a very recent video from Ollie Richards titled “Brutally honest advice to someone who wants to learn a language.” Most if not all his points are covered by Steve Kaufmann in various videos. But this is a very good compact assessment:
I personally don’t like the “years” benchmark because what really matters is how many hours a day you’re putting in on average. Someone putting in hours a day is going to get there a lot quicker. Others who are only putting in 15-30 min a day (see my post) are not likely to get to where they really want until after 10 years (at least in German!). We may have all put in the same number of hours total though when we reach the same degree of fluency (assuming the same language is being learned)
I think you can have very simple conversations after 2-3 months of full time study but that is not what he described as fluency so to answer your question I think he’s giving a sales pitch there for both language learning and LingQ. Which is not to say I am not a fan of this app - I have been using it for years and love it. I think some people might get basic fluency in about a year if they’re very talented and just fall in love with the language so to speak but most people it’s probably 3-5 years of consistent effort and some people maybe they’ll never really get there.