Mike,
From my experience, Spanish is less difficult to reach an intermediate level, especially in understanding, than other languages, at least for an English speaker. You can probably reach a reading level about as quickly with French, but the pronunciation of Spanish is much easier to understand, and it is much easier to pronounce understandably.
As others have noted, mastering the language is still going to be difficult, but you may be suprised how quickly you can reach the level of understanding a TV news broadcast, or reading nonfiction. Understanding a conversation between two Puerto Ricans on the street, or reading Borges, may take you a lot longer.
By the way, there's a terrific course called Destinos for learning Spanish. It's played on a lot of public TV stations in the States, but you can watch all 52 episodes--for free--on the Annenberg/CPB website:
www.learner.org
They also have similar excellent courses for French and German (and English), for those who are interested.
From my experience, Spanish is less difficult to reach an intermediate level, especially in understanding, than other languages, at least for an English speaker. You can probably reach a reading level about as quickly with French, but the pronunciation of Spanish is much easier to understand, and it is much easier to pronounce understandably.
As others have noted, mastering the language is still going to be difficult, but you may be suprised how quickly you can reach the level of understanding a TV news broadcast, or reading nonfiction. Understanding a conversation between two Puerto Ricans on the street, or reading Borges, may take you a lot longer.
By the way, there's a terrific course called Destinos for learning Spanish. It's played on a lot of public TV stations in the States, but you can watch all 52 episodes--for free--on the Annenberg/CPB website:
www.learner.org
They also have similar excellent courses for French and German (and English), for those who are interested.