My progress was pretty quick due to forced immersion. Essentially: Year #1 - Self-study with books/audio courses. Got me up to reading simple newspaper article

My progress was pretty quick due to forced immersion. Essentially: Year #1 - Self-study with books/audio courses. Got me up to reading simple newspaper articles, struggling with TV news. Year #2 - Started with a week-long residential Dutch course. It felt like I didn't learn much new grammar or vocab, but suddenly I was thinking in Dutch, no longer mentally translating. Very expensive but definitely worth it. - Then my company (management consultants) decided I was ready to work full time in Dutch with Dutch clients. The first month was very tiring: I felt 20% IQ points dumber, and could either listen or speak in meetings, not fast enough to do both at once :) Year 3 - After that, I was ok working in Dutch and speaking it socially. Year 4 - By the time I left the Netherlands, I was managing a team of 25 Dutch people, doing meetings, performance reviews in Dutch. I subsequently ended up marrying a Dutch guy. While we left the Netherlands 7 years ago and now live in London, at home we speak probably 30% Dutch/70% English. Dutch was never a language I expected to learn. But I am very glad I did. The sounds of the language still make me smile :)