alt Hacker News> Had I moved to, say, Hungary or Finland I'd probably have had a bit more trouble learning the language but that'd only have added a few months to the process.
Probably a lot more than just a few months. You underestimate how similar Indo-European languages are to each other -- and that you already have a background in English and French.
Maybe a year or two. I don't doubt you would have learned Hungarian/Finnish but it would not have been as easy as you seem to think.
In the mid 2000's, before the Big Crash, we suddenly had lots of work immigrants from Africa in Denmark. They were such a breath of fresh air in comparison to our Somalis. They actually spoke English before they came, they behaved civilized, and a lot of them managed to learn some Danish -- on their own, similarly to what you did with Swedish but without the Open University enrollment, so they did it even more on their own than you did.
That's what proper immigrants do, even if they are only here temporarily.
> Probably a lot more than just a few months
Maybe, haven't tried so it is hard to say. I do have a background in Greek and Latin as well but I suspect those won't be of much help either nor does the fact that I speak Dutch, German, English, Swedish and French and know some rudimentary Russian get me anywhere.
Spelling and grammar in both Finnish as well as Hungarian seem to be quite regular so it would come down to learning a new dictionary, a bunch of suffixes and the rules when to use which. The dictionary would probably be the hardest since it won't be related to anything I know.