YES YOU CAN! Why do people say no? Ok, you can't learn all of it, but you can learn enough to communicate in a simple way. Communication isn't about understanding the news at the most advanced level, It's about being understood and understanding what people say, so that something gets done. Asking for the time. Buying things. Making requests. Getting around town. If the speaker can be understood, then communication has taken place, and the task can be completed. Language is functional. Making requests: Could you ...? With this stem, many requests can be made. All you need is the lexis to complete the sentence. Giving advice: You should/shouldn't ... The teacher should be able to present and demonstrate these structures in a way that can be easily understood. Once the student has the structure, they can practise and substitute the vocabulary. This is good, because it expands the amount of vocabulary a student has, and helps them to learn collocations (how words work together). The biggest factor in all of this, is how good of a learner is the student? Some students are very fast learners, while some are very slow. Does the student have a real need to learn? What motivations does the student have? The best students ask questions, and study and practise at home. I helped one of my wife's cousins (Chinese) to learn English. I saw her once a week. After four, two-hour classes she had present and past simple/continuous (reg. irreg.) verb use, in context. She could ask and tell the time, use prepositions of place and time, ask and give directions around town, buy basic things, and use going to, to talk about plans. Do not be put off by those that say no. Be a good learner.

Hello Najj, I totally agree with Michelle. You might be able to grasp the basics; greetings and basic sentences used in daily conversations.You could learn basic grammar rules, some verbs , some conjunctions .You can read very simple texts and recognize some words in a song or while watching a movie in that language. You can understand parts of a conversation. However,communication with other natives will be restricted to simple sentences and faint comprehension of what they say. It would be easier if the language you are learning is similar to your mother tongue, such as learning Spanish when your mother tongue is Italian. This will facilitate your learning process and you could learn more in shorter time not to the degree of fluency or being able to communicate easily with natives nevertheless. Maybe you could understand texts much easier and be able to read and comprehend more intricate texts at an earlier stage. In your case being a Chinese and learning English for example the degree of difficulty will be higher due to difference in alphabetical system, pronunciation , sentence structure and vocabulary.

It depends on whether you mean 'can you learn it fluently and like a native?' or not. It's possible to learn it at a basic level and be able to use some phrases and communicate with others, and the more you practise doing this, the better you will get at it (which will speed up the learning process). But I personally think that it would be very hard (and possibly even impossible) to become extremely fluent and sound like a native within a few months because it takes a while to learn all the vocabulary and correct grammar of another language, especially if that language isn't similar to your own.

only on a basic level.

Yes, if you speak at least one foreign language and your mother language is related to the new language that you are going to learn. For example, English-German, Spanish - Portuguese, Chinese - Japanese. If you spent reasonable amount of time with the right study material, you can achieve your goal. Since languages are related each other, Your mother language and the foreign language will help you grasp the third, or the forth foreign languages easily