Thank you all very much for your friendly responses and warm welcomes! Благодарю́ вас!

RedFox: Ah, I see. Thank you for the correction, and for translating my introduction message. It is an honour, indeed!

Alexei90: I must confess that I needed a dictionary to understand what you had written, haha! As mentioned initially, I am a complete novice to the language. Благодарю́ вас! Thank you for the welcome.

Lampada: Thank you for the invitation and the welcome!

Hoax: It most certainly is, from what I have seen of it. I look forward to being able to communicate fluently with all the Russian speakers on the forum. Thank you.

Though learning abilities vary from individual to individual, given the approximate difficulty of the Russian language relative to an English speaker, how long (on average) does it take a native English speaker to learn Russian fluently?