What sounds complicated but isn't ?

Being to speak several languages, say 8 or 10.

It's not about being a brainiac, it's about quality over quantity.

Roughly speaking, you don't need to learn all the words in a language to be able to communicate with it. While the reasonable amount varies from language to language, is rarely enough to have you studying the language for over an year. If you're in constant interactions that require - and that's the key, you have no choice - you to be a part of it, whether those situations are real or in a training in a classroom, eventually you'll get to start building concepts in the said language so you can express - very limited compared to a native - something.

For instance, while it took me about 7 years to be able to communicate in English in a confident way, it took my friend less than an year to learn Brazilian Portuguese - which is my native language. The point is: she can communicate just as much as I can. I know more about English than she does about Portuguese, but most of what I know I don't get to use very often, if ever - like "convoluted", "obnoxious", "exquisite" or something like that -.

That's not say she can keep up with everything, but she can make herself and understood, even though she almost always forgets that in my language the verbs change a lot, so instead of learning all the forms of the verb "go" - ir, vou, vai, vão, vamos, fui, foi, fomos, foram, iria, iriam, irei, irão, irá -, she just uses the infinitive form "ir" for pretty much everything and while it is grammatically wrong, pretty much anyone can understand her. "eu ir para casa agora" - something along the lines of "I go to house now", - when the correct would be "eu vou pra casa agora" or "vou pra casa agora", if you don't wanna say "eu". Eventually, she picks up on small mistakes and correct the most recurrent ones - the ones that actually matter in a conversation.

This means that, if you have enough means of interaction, necessity and engagement with a particular language, your brain will "recognize" it as something important and use all of its part - no 10% bullshit - to try and make the most of the language. In the beginning it will be painfully difficult, but eventually, even though without much effort you won't get to speak any language properly, if you just wanna speak it in a way that people will understand you, you don't need years and years of practice.

Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most of part, depending on your routine, you can get to learn at least one language a year. Conditions may not allow that to be the case for most of us, though.

/r/AskReddit Thread