What is the shortest time it took you to learn a new language?

[Norm A]

I once read somewhere that there are some tools that can help you learn a new language in just 90 days. I wonder if that is true. How long does it really take to learn a new language? I know we all learn at different rates, but I would love to hear everyone's stories of how long it took them to learn which language. 

[AExAVF]

If you are learning a new language, or more specifically, one which is not native to your home country, the reality is that there is no shortest possible time.  It depends on your willingness to learn, your ability to comprehend and understand the spoken dialect, your frequent interaction in that language with fellow learners, and a lot more.  If you have read that you will learn this language in 90 days or less, that is wishful thinking or more like a marketing ploy than anything else.  In my case, I am learning Japanese, but I haven't even began to go beyond the basics of the language.  I still have to take the next two levels of my elementary Japanese classes before I can take the JLPT N5, and that is still a long way to go for me.

[darkchild]

I do agree with @AExAVF there is no shortest possible time to learn a language. Most institutions and softwares just use the catch phrase to attract more learners and use it as a marketing strategy.

I believe it all depends on the individual and the eagerness and willingness to learn fast enough.

[wolfette]

I would say it's possible to learn the basics at least of a language in just 90 days. If you're speaking it all the time, listening to it all the time, writing it and reading it throughout those 90 days then you're much more likely to pick up more than you would if you just looked at it briefly a few times a day or a few times a week. The more practice you get with the language the more likely you are to learn more of it in a shorter period of time. I highly doubt you'd be completely fluent in that time, though.

[lushlala]

Yes, I would say this did happen to me when I went to be an au pair in Italy! My visa was only for 3 months, and by the time I was ready to leave the country, I could converse freely in Italian. I'm not saying I was fluent or that my Italian was fluent, but even the locals were taken aback at the progress I'd made in such a short time. I think it really helped that most of my host family spoke little to no English. We were out in the sticks where people spoke no English at all, so I was forced to make more of an effort than I normally would. That's why I'm such a huge fan of immersion

[宇崎ちゃん]

I learnt German in 30 days, since it's very close to one of my 2 native languages.
But I haven't been using German since then, so I already dropped from fluency to beginner level.

I can still understand written and spoken German to some extend, though.

[Rooks57]

With enough studying, you could probably grasps the core structure of a language in ninety days.  In ninety days, you could figure out how to structure sentences, how verbs work, grammar, and other aspects of writing.  I'm not great at the verbal and listening aspect, but some people just have the ear for it and could probably master the core sounds and replicated them.  With all that mastered, they would probably know enough to self correct but I still think learning a language is a life long process. 

[lingvo]

I learnt intermediate Esperanto in less than two months. For a romance language native speaker such as me, Esperanto is pretty much familiar, so it was even easier to learn compared to someone from a germanic or asian background.