Well, I won't argue with anyone here, but I know of several people who have learned languages in a year's time. If you feel it would take you seven years or more to learn a single language, why would you bother? That is a really long time.

I think this depends on what you consider fluency. Sure grammar and being able to read the language is important, but to me SPEAKING is by far the most important. And a vocabulary of 10,000+ words is not really necessary to speak in everyday parlance. If that is the standard of fluency then this would certainly not be possible in one year. Agreed. But I would think that I could carry on a conversation on a variety of topics after that period of time.