How Long Does It Take To Learn To Speak Spanish?
When learning to speak Spanish the most important thing is to make a small amount of daily contact with the language. Often with our busy lives and especially when learning Spanish as a hobby it's simply not possible to devote hours a day to learning it.
This is actually ideal since most experts will recommend that you spend no more that 40min to 1 hour a day when studying a new language.
The mind needs time to gradually absorb all the new information and if you are over eager you could find you'll quickly run out of motivation to continue and start getting worse instead better.
Pace yourself! Learning to speak Spanish is a long term commitment.
A lot also depends on your natural aptitude for learning languages. Personally I don't think I have any special aptitude for acquiring new languages and certainly in school I never excelled in learning them! The most important thing to remember is that ultimately we all reach the same destination - being able to communicate in Spanish! Does it really matter if it takes you 1 year instead of 6 months to do it?
Obviously if you have the opportunity to put your Spanish into practice with a Spanish speaking person on a daily basis then this is going to speed up the time it takes for fluency. Equally attending a language school in a Spanish speaking country will have an impact on the time it takes you to get a handle on being able to speak it fluently.
A lot of this however is realistically achievable through Spanish courses online or from CD, you certainly don't have to live in a Spanish speaking country in order to get a good grasp of the language. It's most useful to do that after you have put some time and effort studying it yourself at home, kind of like a finishing touch.
When first starting out I would advise you to make a conscious decision to devote 1 year of daily learning time in order to learn to speak Spanish well - and don't fall for the time scales given to you on the covers of Spanish courses!
They are put there to excite and to sell you.