if he doesn't want to waste 7 years on russian. then get mad at him and call him an idiot.
Whether or not he wants to 'waste' his time on this or that language is up to him. What I objected was the attitude put across in his post that difficult, time-consuming things are not really worth bothering with.

That said, there was no need for the ad hominem. Apologies.

did a russian goth make fun of your pinstripe shirt today or what ?
How did you know about my pinstripe shirts?

I wish you the best in your forty year attempt to master another language. By then, I'll be on my fifth.
And I'm sure you'll be able to order coffee and chat about the weather in all of them. Good luck to you. Personally, I don't think language-collecting is a particularly worthy thing: most people who claim, for example, to be 'fluent in five languages' actually have no knowledge of any of them - including their own - beyond the superficial. It's the intellectual equivalent of driving a cheap sports car. Or several cheap sports cars, come to that.