How long to learn a language?

To James,

Re: ..."when you say Japanese and Finnish etc are related, in what way do you mean? Do they share vocabulary, similar sentance structure or what? "
Here is a web page that may help:
http://www.fact-index.com/j/ja/japanese_language.html

Keep in mind, we are talking about a long-distance realtionship here. Also, Finnic peoples don't live just in Finland, they have relatives across northern Russia and into Siberia. The ancestors of the Japanese (or at least some of them) migrated from Siberia probably by way of Korea some 2,000 years ago.

Possible relationships are Finnish pöllö "owl" with Korean buli,"owl" Japanese fukuru "owl" alowwing for consonant changes p to b and f etc. l to r. Also Finnish ulvoa "to howl" with Korean ul-da "to howl" and Japanese hoevu "to howl" again allowing for some consonant changes. These occur in Indoeuropean languages too and explain how English fish, Latin piscis and Celtic iasc, esk "fish" are all related to each other or how words as dissimilar to each other as English grub, German Raupe "caterpillar" and Russian ryba "fish" are interrelated.

Very very long, in China,we were taught from junior I on and till ...(when someday you are not in school!!!),and our English is still far from good.
There must be something not that right...

hoevu should read hoeru - Japanese for "to howel".