[jmspring]

I think it depends on how different the new language is. If you have a basis in C-style languages, it is often not to hard to move between them syntactically. Nuances might take a bit more time -- for instance, going from C/Java to C#, lambdas, LINQ, and other commonly used components took a bit of time.

When I first took a gander at Erlang, I poked at it, got a bit bored because reading the language wasn't a bit harder. I took some time off, revisited a couple of books and looked at some code and it made more sense.

But, overwhelmingly the way to learn is to find a small project that you are interested in implementing and star there.

There really are two parts to learning a language -- the syntax and the ecosystem/standard libraries. Often, becoming accustomed to the syntax is the easy part, understanding the ecosystem can take more time.

[kastnerkyle]

I agree 100%. One of my favorite ways to learn a new language is by doing problems from https://projecteuler.net . The mathematical basis of Project Euler seems to map into core language concepts better than many other "getting started" exercises.