I think you can become reasonably competent in a language in a year. I was hacking out awesome Lisp macros after five months or so of programming in it. Also, taking a course or two on programming languages can be educational - you don't have to be a guru in a language to use it or pick up useful ideas from it.
Also - why are you blowing off some of these languages? Sure, I don't want to get a full time job coding Java but there are lots of good things to learn from it. Sometimes you learn what you really don't like! Also - why does everyone hate Lisp so much? What is it about parens that just turns everyone off? Its actually a very cool language but I think most people are just so scared or intimidated or turned off because it doesn't look like C.
well there's my two cents.
Personally, I wouldn't mind learning Ruby and Japanese. (perhaps a ruby job in Japan?). And Arc, if it ever gets released.
--rachel
