I did this. I lived in Ecuador for a year as a kind of sabbatical (though I'm not an academic.) Before I went I took a 6-week Spanish 101 class so I wouldn't starve, and then just muddled along as best I could. After about 3 months I had the basics down. I could ask for and follow directions, buy stuff, read and write business email, and have a conversation with someone. But socializing was hard - a conversation that involved more than one other person left me wondering what was going on, and I couldn't figure out how to say things fast enough to contribute before the the topic had changed. Also, I didn't consume media like TV or newspapers because it was too much work.
Then I started dating an Ecuadorian woman, and my Spanish acquisition just took off, especially when we moved in together. Like the Korean, I put in a tremendous amount of effort, although without flash cards. I did repeat everything over and over, to make sure it stayed in my head. But mostly it was just the endless necessity of communicating on a practical and intimate level about everything.
"Where's my blue shirt?"
"Why is your friend angry?"
"What's this letter from the electric company about?"
"When I was a kid, my grandfather gave me a baseball glove for Christmas."
"No, I wasn't looking at that other girl."
"There is corruption in the U.S., it's just more sophisticated than in Ecuador."
The other important thing that happened was that I started watching TV with her. She was really into telenovelas and sketch comedy shows.
Let me tell, you telenovelas (spanish soap operas) are awesome for learning the language. First, the characters all have accents that convey their social position, and different novelas are made in different countries. So you get exposed to a lot of variation in pronunciation and vocabulary. On the other hand, this is TV, so everybody enunciates clearly and there's no hemming and hawing. Finally, everything is so dramatic and over-acted that you can tell what's going even without understanding the dialog. I alternated between rolling my eyes and concentrating furiously to catch all the nuances.
After a year, I was pretty much fluent in Spanish, though not quite at the level of the Korean's mastery of English. I have an idea of what kind of effort would be required to get to that level, but since I'm not in Ecuador any more, I haven't bothered. My wife and I speak both English and Spanish around the house, but we try to keep it to one language at a time - not always easy.
So yeah, marrying a Spanish speaker was an enormous aid to learning the language. I don't know if it was the "quickest," but it was definitely faster than doing it on my own, and much more pleasant. ;-)
Then I started dating an Ecuadorian woman, and my Spanish acquisition just took off, especially when we moved in together. Like the Korean, I put in a tremendous amount of effort, although without flash cards. I did repeat everything over and over, to make sure it stayed in my head. But mostly it was just the endless necessity of communicating on a practical and intimate level about everything.
"Where's my blue shirt?" "Why is your friend angry?" "What's this letter from the electric company about?" "When I was a kid, my grandfather gave me a baseball glove for Christmas." "No, I wasn't looking at that other girl." "There is corruption in the U.S., it's just more sophisticated than in Ecuador."
The other important thing that happened was that I started watching TV with her. She was really into telenovelas and sketch comedy shows.
Let me tell, you telenovelas (spanish soap operas) are awesome for learning the language. First, the characters all have accents that convey their social position, and different novelas are made in different countries. So you get exposed to a lot of variation in pronunciation and vocabulary. On the other hand, this is TV, so everybody enunciates clearly and there's no hemming and hawing. Finally, everything is so dramatic and over-acted that you can tell what's going even without understanding the dialog. I alternated between rolling my eyes and concentrating furiously to catch all the nuances.
After a year, I was pretty much fluent in Spanish, though not quite at the level of the Korean's mastery of English. I have an idea of what kind of effort would be required to get to that level, but since I'm not in Ecuador any more, I haven't bothered. My wife and I speak both English and Spanish around the house, but we try to keep it to one language at a time - not always easy.
So yeah, marrying a Spanish speaker was an enormous aid to learning the language. I don't know if it was the "quickest," but it was definitely faster than doing it on my own, and much more pleasant. ;-)