It took around 10 years of study in a language school to actually get the highest degree available there. But I did start young (around age 7) and watching cartoons (no dubbing, no subtitles) at a even younger age also helped (even if that might sound silly to some). I'm guessing it was harder for you as you had to switch to a completely new alphabet.
It might have been slightly harder for me, but not by much, I don't think. I vaguely remember learning English alphabet as a child, but I don't actually remember
not knowing it. So, from my perspective, I could always read English, though, obviously, not always correctly. Fortunately, Latin script is taught in Russia almost universally, because at least one foreign language is a mandatory part of the standard curriculum. That said, make no mistake, there is absolutely no way to gain even remotely workable knowledge of any language from an average Russian school (however harsh it might sound, that includes Russian). But some of the basics are covered, if nothing else.
I started learning English in earnest in my early twenties, gaining more or less my current level of proficiency around 28. That was all by myself, since I'm not a fan of educational systems (that's more about my personal qualities than leveling critique against them, though there is a healthy bit of the latter, too). Any troubles notwithstanding (and alleviated by dictionaries and textbooks), I read books in English, watched movies and TV in it, and generally used English the way I would my native language. To date, I have taken no exams that would confirm my level of knowledge.
Since I basically learned English to have access to information and entertainment, and that goal was successfully achieved, I never had a need to.
Aside from English being a requirement, I think I do not agree with the general sentiment Bakker expresses there because, to me, learning new languages is never a mistake or a waste of time. But that might be just because it is something I always had an interest in (even if I only learned one foreign language to a degree of fluency).
I see where you're coming from, but that's part of why I agree with Bakker, though for personal reasons. Languages come easy to me, so it seems like a constant repetition of things I already do well. There are other fields where I struggle, and overcoming those struggles offers more to pushing my intellectual limits.
That's the thing, your average Dûnyain should have an even harder time exposed to any language spoken in the Three Seas than your average English speaker (that doesn't speak any other language) exposed to, say, Russian, like in your example below. I'd guess that most English-speaking people have at least heard a couple of Russian words during their lives. For a Dûnyain leaving Ishuäl, everything should have been completely unknown. Kellhus should have found other languages nearly as strange as the existence of sorcery and Nonmen, not have the capacity to learn them at superhuman speed.
Exactly what I meant!
That's an interesting example. And the funny thing is, after I listened to the word spoken aloud, I realized you could try to phonetically spell it in Portuguese and it would be far closer to the original than anything you could try and do with English (a greater similarity of sounds between the two languages, maybe?).
For sure. I don't know a lick of Portuguese, but I've heard it enough times to recognize the way it sounds (thank you, poorly dubbed Brazilian soap operas, I guess?). I can concur, it sounds way closer to Russian than English. I'm quite often able to tell when someone speaks Portuguese, and the same goes for Spanish and Italian, which I also don't know at all, but listened to frequently.
I also feel learning Japanese is easier for a speaker of Russian than a speaker of English. There are just a few sounds in Japanese that don't exist in Russian, and those can still be approximated almost seamlessly.
