It seems that every public polyglot has a different recommendation. Benny Lewis says “speak from day one.” Stephen Krashen says speaking comes quite naturally on its own time after massive volumes of comprehensible input and can often take years. Lýdia Machová says to improve speaking one must practice speaking, though she tends to wait until after two months of listening to start. Steve Kaufmann waits until after about eight months of listening.
When does everyone here try speaking when you’re learning a language? Does the time you start change with the kind of language your learning (for example, if it’s very distant do you wait longer, or if the speaking is very different from the writing, do you start right away)? And of experienced polyglots, does your approach to speaking now differ from when you first began learning languages?