You don't need anything like 10000 hours to attain reasonable fluency in any language: http://learnalanguageortwo.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-long-does-it-take-to

You don't need anything like 10000 hours to attain reasonable fluency in any language: http://learnalanguageortwo.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-language.html http://learnalanguageortwo.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-long-doe... I think it's mostly a matter of motivation. In my experience, Native English speakers are much less likely to learn a foreign language even when they're living abroad. In Japan, most non-anglo foreigners will learn Japanese to some extent and in fact they might communicate among themselves in Japanese. On the other hand, many anglos don't need to speak much Japanese in their jobs and, in their personal life, would rather restrict themselves to the tiny English-speaking population than go to the trouble of learning Japanese.