I've been learning Portuguese for almost three years. I speak it about two hours a week. I've taken a couple of trips to Brazil during this time and that improved my abilities.
I'm glad the question is about languages we 'speak' because I've always found it more difficult to learn to read and write additional languages rather than learning to speak and understand. To my native English ear, both French and Portuguese have a cadence that can't be learned from studying books. The lyricism of the languages is what makes them fun to speak. English is a rather 'flat' language, although dialects in some countries, like Jamaica and Australia, have a pleasant modulation.
I had to take Latin and Spanish in school but wasn't much interested at the time. One of the reasons native born Americans are less likely to be multilingual is that our normal school curriculum does not require study of foreign languages before the age of 13 or 14. I think that's a bit late for most students.
I know! Oh, how I wish I could have begun learning a second or third language early on. Classes weren't even offered until high school (age 14). And yet studies all agree that the best time to learn languages is early on. So I have been stocking my baby niece's library full of foreign language books and tapes in the hopes that she can get a head start. :) Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
And after reading everyone's multilingual abilities I feel like a real moron. About the only phrase that sticks in my mind that my grandmother taught me is either Polish or Bohemian-'ya milooyou tebeh'..phonetically and I believe means 'I love you'? "People never do evil so throughly and happily as when they do it from moral conviction."-Blaise Pascal
I learned Spanish the hard way via gov't tapes. It was more thorough but far, far too rigid and what you really want in a language is to feel like speaking it is no chore.
Pax Night and day you can find me Flogging the Simian
