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[shlorf]

If they have 0 military skills it can take over a year full time training from my experience. Best way if you don't use danger rooms is to look at the first big migrant wave (the waves from year one are often only a single digit number). If you dig out some gold veins in year one you're bound to get a 20+ wave who will have a few guys who already are at least novice in armor user or fighter. Look for the dorfs with outdoor jobs like fisherdwarf woodcutter etc and for the siege and pump operators they often have some military experience. Draft multiple small squads of 3-5 dwarfs and set their training schedule order to 2 dwarfs minimum. If there are more than 2 dwarfs available (not sleeping/eating/drinking) they will do demonstrations which are ineffective until they have a few levels in the skills (and even then they often teach stuff they're bad at like wrestling/biting/kicking).
If there are only 2 dwarfs they are very like to spar however which gives a happy thought and tends to improve skill the fastest. If you are lucky or set up for it on embark you can also have a mid skilled dwarf in a bigger squad with recruits and have demonstrations do something (still takes multiple seasons for one level in skill however).
Beating up wildlife outdoors or in the first cavern is also a good way to gain weapon skills but requires more micromanagement.
If you bring a hunter (make his highest non military skill ambusher and give him a few levels in marksdwarf) on embark, and your area isn't hostile enough to make hunting in the first two years dangerous, you can have a legendary marksdwarf pretty fast.

Having the marksdwarfs go hunting is a good idea but it causes problems if they are assigned to a squad and to hunting at the same time as they will fail to switch quivers properly. From my experience it's best to have one or two train up on the wildlife with bone bolts and once they're good enough disable hunting on them wait for them to drop their crossbows and quivers and then draft them into the marksdorf squad.