There are grades of fluency. I learnt Italian in Italy (while working there with English colleagues so speaking English at work during the week), in 9 months to

There are grades of fluency. I learnt Italian in Italy (while working there with English colleagues so speaking English at work during the week), in 9 months to a level I could hold a good conversation one-to-one. I had studied Latin, French and German at school and enjoyed them - the French was a fair help with Italian (Latin too though that was not exactly active). I realised that in a group situation, with multiple conversations going on at once, it took me another 9 months to be comfortable. If you can't keep up you lose track very quickly. In your mother tongue it is "effortless". One-to-one you can ask if you don't understand - in a group you can't I was in my early 20s at the time and made a big effort to socialise with the locals. That include many a boring evening when unless someone spoke to me specifically, I sat and smiled and had little clue what the group was talking about. But gradually things seeped in. I remember my German teacher at school recounting how she learnt it from scratch at university - they were started off by having to learn lots of texts by rote. Seemed a bit retrograde but it worked and they learned rapidly. Reminds me of: http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/how-i-rewired-my-brain-to-become-fluent-in-math http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/how-i-rewired-my-brain-t...