It could be misleading due to the phonetic similarity but in fact Spanish is closer to Portuguese than to Italian or any other of the "big" Romance languages. And although the utility of a language can be relative to one's particular circumstances, Portuguese also seems more useful than Italian, or at least it has many more speakers scattered around the world.

I think english class in school came up when i was about 12 years old, and so i learned it in school for about 6 years.

Can't say what was the thing that halped most or least, because i think it was pretty easy to learn. My English teachers where funny guys, that might have helped. ^^

Since then i always used english to watch movies, tv shows, or play videogames that where originally made in english. Translation sometimes losses the deeper meaning, and a new dub sometimes kills the mood.

I once found a really good japanese audio learning course. It is in english, and feels like a fun school class. If i find it again i will post a link to amazon here. I think it was really good. I want to commit to it one day to learn it better.

I like trying to learn German using this site:http://www.duolingo.com/ and some books I have on German. I don't have much free time for it other than the weekends now and usually on the weekends I like playing games and watching Netflix programs since I don't have much time for that on school days.

I speak four languages fluently. Hungarian as my mother-tongue, romanian as my country's official language (and because many of my friends/acquaintances speak it also), german I've learned in school and from TV and english I've learned at first mostly from cartoons and games :D.

That's what folks say, but isn't that mainly because Cantonese has more tones than Mandarin?

Anyways, I'm likely to try learning Cantonese sometime after I finish Mandarin. Mainly because once you spend the time learning to read and write Chinese, you might as well learn both major Chineses.
I misread this the first time. And, I think much of the problem comes from bad teaching methods that emphasize grammatical perfection over vocabulary before a student is far enough to converse. That's a mistake. My German grammar isn't too bad, but because my vocabulary is so small, I don't get much of a chance to improve. Also, the over emphasis on accent eradication could be better spent on other things.

We don't expect that of children, so I'm not sure why we expect it of adults. One thing I learned in China is that you make more progress using the words you know to ask about ones you don't know than you do by issuing grammatically perfect sentences over and over again.

But, things are improving, there's more and more talk about communicative competence, which is really the point of a language. If you don't want to communicate you might as well just scribble on pieces of paper and babble.

Even Chinese characters aren't that difficult. Sure you have to work hard to master reading and writing, but the reading and writing that you really need is achieved by about 85% of Chinese people, so it's not a matter of being smart, it's a matter of dedication and using the most efficient methods you can find. Then buckling down and doing it.

As you probably noticed, my English isn't perfect but I understand quite well and am able to have a conversation about material or abstract topics.

I started learning English in kinder garden. It was usual "What is on the picture? Dog." basic word learning. Then we started having courses in elementary school. Iron Curtain had been taken down not long ago and there was a desperate need for good teachers. There weren't many and they fluctuated a lot. As a result, we started from beginning a couple of times with each new teacher. I haven't learned much there.

Our high school teacher was a nice and patient guy but he was obsessed about grammar. I had learned how to create sentences meeting some grammar conditions but I was very insecure about it.

The true eye opener was to find a hobby requiring the language you want to learn. I wanted to play games that weren't translated in my native language and I wanted to watch anime series that weren't very known here. I spent hours upon hours pausing every block of text searching in dictionaries. Yet every time I was rewarded. When you search for a phrase dozens or more times, you eventually remember it :).
Then I really, really wanted to show a greatness of some TV shows to others, so I began to translate subtitles. It's an awesome exercise because it forces you to give the word an exact meaning. When I read subtitles, my mind is in the "She meant something like this" mode. When I translate, my mind is "How to express this phrase to preserve the playfulness in the best possible way" mode.
And nothing beats an interaction with other people in the language. In my opinion, forums are perfect as a starter. It gives you an edge in comparison to plain essay writing because you need to go with a flow, not adjusting it to your will.

Oops, I overdid it :). Short answers:
How long did it take? - Hard to tell. I would say my 3 years after high school were the most formative.
How comfortable are you speaking in second language? - Less comfortable than in my native. I'm eloquent and like to play with words a lot yet my English isn't on the same level. My swiftness decreased due to a lack of practice and that plays a role how comfy I'm too.
How difficult was it, and in what way? - Studies were hard. I had troubles to get good grades. I missed varied practices that would made me understood principles and exceptions better.
Did anything really help, or hurt the process? - Teachers hadn't pointed out that I should have pronounced "kn" with silent "k". I discovered my mistake on my own during uni studies and it took me a great deal to suppress the habit.
Was it required learning, or voluntary? - The learning process that gave me the most was voluntary.
How much resolve did it take? - I was doing what I enjoyed, so actually not much. And I always looked forward to it.
Was there a goal in mind for doing it? - Getting better at understanding the piece of work I enjoyed. Getting an access to "bigger library". Better I was, more challenging shows, games or books I was able to enjoy.
Right now I would love to learn Spanish, German, Chinese or Japanese yet there aren't that many stimulus (e.g. series untranslated into English or Czech) to keep my interest up.

Exactly. Our language courses at school suffered from this. As a result, many people are afraid to talk because it won't be understandable ( = perfect) and when a random encounter happens, they're stressed too much to reply meaningfully.
Komensky's "Learning by playing" is the most powerful tool.

:-D

Sorry...

Its not that bad.

Yeah, your right.

This is going to sound a bit silly, but I learned English by playing video games as a kid. I grew up on the Humongous adventure games, and by age ten I was already doing a significant portion of my reading in English. Alas, I have had little chance to practice my spoken English, despite the fact that significant resources are devoted to it in the school system; along with mathematics and Swedish, it is one of three subjects for which a passing grade is mandatory. I have several friends who picked up English in a similar manner, too.

Yes .There are multiple intonations for a good number of words which can mean quite different things, whereas mandarin pronounces words which generally only mean one thing. Getting the tones right is the key. Hell i get stuff wrong all the time. My aunt calls my cantonese 'slang canto' LOL.

It all started with "ET: The extraterrestrial".........well, not really :P.

Actually I started learning english after my parents got me an Atari 800 computer, I had a hard time trying to understand the manuals since they were all in english, so my parents asked me if I´d like to learn english and since I agreed, they sent me to private english classes ( around the age of 10 ).
I was trying to play ET: The extraterrestrial, or more exactly understand why I always ended up in a hole which I couldn´t escape and the game wouldn´t end but the only thing to do was resetting. So I started getting the manual of that game translated also.
The advance in english language with that teacher was very slow, though I started liking the idea of speaking another language.
Later ( at the age of 13 ) my parents got me an Amiga 500 and eventually an Amiga CDTV with a genlock add-on (real-time video editing), around that time they got me private classes at home to learn to use it since it was much more capable outside the gaming realm. The teacher told my parents I should really learn english since in the future computers would be very important and every resource that landed here was written in english. So I started learning with another teacher and there was when my english really ramped up. By the time I got to highschool (where you can choose between french, portuguese or english and sometimes italian or german) I chose english, but I found the english I was being taught was way behind the one I already knew so it was good for grades :D
While studying english, playing video games and reading foreign magazines helped a lot since they kept me in constant contact with the language, that´s an important aspect I think, to be able to utilize it.
Sometimes at elementary school I would even mix some english words without even noticing it while writing.

Also I have studied japanese since I have always been fond of various culture aspects, the thing is there´re not too many instances of using it, sometimes I think I have forgot some of it but whenever I speak/write with a japanese person I´m glad it all comes back, so it´s still there. And I try to chat in japanese from time to time to reassure it.
At first we were like 20 people in the class room, after two weeks dwindled to about 13, after a month we were 10 and by the end of the first year we were 8 :P. So the teachers were right when they told us hiragana tables, katakana tables and the start of kanji using are the great filters.
At first I thought hiragana, katakana and over that kanji, just made it more difficult to learn japanese, specially when we were showed cards with words and it took me quite a while to read it, I´d prefer romanised, but the teachers insisted that we should learn proper japanese and not romanised and how spot on they were, after a while of being exposed to hiragana, katakana and kanji it became second thought while reading something, I would read much faster if it was written in japanese and not romanised. And even the kanji help separate the words than if it was all written in hiragana, so again, faster reading.

Also I´ve learned a little bit of chinese ( putonghua ) thanks to a chinese friend that used to taught me, and that made me gain interest again in trying to learn it. I´ve been hearing chinese since I was a kid too, since we used to watch martial arts movies every weekend. The thing with chinese besides the four tone ( that can mean the difference between mum and horse :D ) is the use of pictograms only, that makes you change your strategy as how to learn the language (written at least) since every word is a drawing basicly.

Now I´m studying hangeul. It´s really reassuring with any language, when you watch something that used to sound like gibberish and suddenly starts to sound like words, and words you know.
Sometimes I even hear a word I don´t know the meaning of, but since your ear starts picking those words you can search their meaning afterwards, and I have learn some in that fashion as well.
Watching TV shows/movies really helps to train the ear while you are learning.
Most of these languages I have learnt them through english so basicly english served me also as a stepping stone to learn other languages.
The ackward thing with hangeul ( at least on the computer ) is that unlike japanese or chinese where you can write romanised and turn it into hiragana, kanji, katakana or chinese characters, each key is assigned a syllable or a consonant in hangeul, which has no similarity whatsoever to that letter sound in spanish, so I´m memorizing the hangeul keyboard layout also, so writing in hangeul at the time is really slow, compared to the other languages.

Best advice my englsh teacher gave me was: "Don´t try to translate from spanish to english, think in english"..........something that funnily enough is said in "Neo Genesis Evangelion" when the main character doesn´t seem to be able to handle a partner´s E.V.A. and Asuka tells him "..the problem is you´re thinking in japanese, think in german....." It´s the same thing, if you want to communicate you can´t think in your own language since that makes you sound like Tarzan at most, you must think in the terms of the language you´re learning. Granted being among people who speaks the language natively is the most efficient way to learn just like when you grow up, but not all people learn the same way, and besides most people can´t have the luxury of being surrounded by people that speaks the target language, be it for one thing or the other. Though interaction is key I think, either by speaking to someone, writing, hearing people talk, etc. And movies/tv shows help me greatly in that respect since you are exposed to varied situations in which different language patterns are used ( for example the way they speak to friends, family, strangers, etc) and you make also a connection of words with images which is very helpful since if we get scientific, is how the brain remembers words given to objects in a simple way.
Repetition also helps, for example if you learnt a list of words, trying to repeat that list a hundred times on the same day won´t be of much help if any, repeating it once a while is much more helpful and makes it stick longer. So what reallly counts is being constant not cramming it all at one given time. Just like with food it´s healthier to eat less but in shorter spans that more in one go. At least, that is what works for me.

That's not surprising. Even in Mandarin the 3rd tone will change depending upon the next tone and a few words will do that as well. But, that's relatively manageable.

Sounds like the same situation as with Japanese. A native speaker will produce the correct intonation pattern only about 3/4 of the time and recognize it about 8/10 of the time. I don't know Japanese, but I"m guessing that it's a working memory thing. Keeping in mind what you want to say and the tone rules and paying attention is liable to wind up with something being messed up.

I had the same experience. At first, seeing all those strange characters was intimidating, but after getting used to it, it's actually easier to read something with kanji than romanized or pure hiragana/katakana. It becomes more or less automatic the more you read.