It depend how much time you plan to put in learning Chinese everyday, what goal you want to achieve and how interested you are in 中文. anyway, everything boils down to persistence:-）

Some people said: "If you understand 500 Chinese Characters, you can read newspaper in Chinese." I don't know if this kind of version is right because I'm a native speaker! XD I have been learning Chinese since I born. When I was a student at kindergarten, I had started read newspaper in Chinese. I think that help me a lot. If I found any character I don't know, I looked up my dictionary or ask my mom. Time by time, my Chinese is my best subject now! I do the same way to my English and other languages learning. Anyway, don't be afraid to say, to read or to ask. You're not a native speaker! Of course you'll make some mistakes! But don't worry, I think everybody in this website will help you! If you keep reading and looking up your Chinese dictionary every day, I think you will improve you Chinese skills very very very soon! ps. You don't need to read newspaper in the first, (as we don't need to read CNN news when we just started English learning XD) you can try to read some easy short message or practice how to write Chinese characters. When I was 5 years old, I almost wrote 20 different character for 20 times(20x20=400!) A character, 20 times! So my Chinese basic is very hard and strong! Anyway, give up your Chinese learning! Keep going! I hope I can help you ^_<

1 year

If you keep your passion, it would not be long. You could chat with me if you like.

It will take years of study to obtain a degree of fluency. However I believe many people are conversational within a year if they have stdied hard. Ultimately it comes down to how much time you put in and what you define having 'learnt' the language as.