I think it's almost never worth it to learn a language as an adult just for fun or in order to consume media. That said, I have met several people who learned a foreign language as adults to a native-like proficiency (by my own judgement as a native speaker of that language). All of them use that language extensively in the course of their work; two of them are professors teaching either the language or a subject that requires reading difficult primary sources in the language at well-known universities. This is a non-indo-european language that's supposed to be hard for English speakers to learn, so I imagine it's even easier to find examples of people who have achieved this level of skill in the examples you named (French/German/Spanish).
My prior is that it's not really possible to learn a language well in the one-hour/day format in which foreign languages are taught in most secondary schools and language-specific supplementary schooling programs, no matter how many years you spend on it.
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I think it's almost never worth it to learn a language as an adult just for fun or in order to consume media. That said, I have met several people who learned a foreign language as adults to a native-like proficiency (by my own judgement as a native speaker of that language). All of them use that language extensively in the course of their work; two of them are professors teaching either the language or a subject that requires reading difficult primary sources in the language at well-known universities. This is a non-indo-european language that's supposed to be hard for English speakers to learn, so I imagine it's even easier to find examples of people who have achieved this level of skill in the examples you named (French/German/Spanish).
My prior is that it's not really possible to learn a language well in the one-hour/day format in which foreign languages are taught in most secondary schools and language-specific supplementary schooling programs, no matter how many years you spend on it.
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