Alternatively, in the languages I speak:

Welche Sprachen sprechen Sie? (Deutsch/German)

¿Qué idiomas habla usted? (Español/Spanish)

Quelle langue parlez-vous? (Français/French)

EDIT: These sentences are now up to date.

  • cobysev
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    39 months ago

    Fluently? Only English. But I spent 20 years in the US military, nearly 8 of them living full-time in foreign countries. So I did my best to learn at least a little of the languages I was exposed to in my travels.

    I was stationed in Japan for 3 years. I learned how to get around and order food in Japanese, plus some limited conversation. I’m actually studying to read the language now. I could read Hirigana and Katakana (the Japanese alphabets) when I lived there. But it takes their students their entire school lives to learn how to read Kanji (the complex Chinese-borrowed symbols that represent entire words), so that one will keep me busy for a while.

    When I was stationed in Germany, I learned some basic German, thanks to having friendly neighbors who spoke nearly fluent English. They helped me correct and improve my German language skills. But I was only in the country for a couple years, so I didn’t get very advanced with it.

    I took 4 years of French in high school. I thought I was pretty decent at it, but every time I attempted to speak the language in France, the locals immediately switched over to English to converse with me.

    Random related tangent: my wife and I took a vacation to Berlin once, and my wife, like me, spent several years studying French in high school. She decided to test her German language skills with the locals, and when she spoke, they immediately switched to French for her. Turns out, she speaks German with a heavy French accent. She was able to finish her conversation in French.

    I’m currently studying Norwegian. My 3x great grandfather immigrated to America from Norway, and I still have living descendants of my ancestors over there. My dad and I went to visit them once, and I would like to be able to speak their native language the next time I go back. It used to be a rule that everyone in my family line learned English and Norwegian, but my grandfather died when my dad was only 2, so my dad never learned Norwegian, and thus neither did I.

    I learned some extremely limited Korean. I was assigned to South Korea twice, for a year each time, and the military wouldn’t let me live off-base amongst the locals, so I didn’t get much free time to explore the country and learn the language. But I made an effort to learn some phrases so I could be polite in public, order food, and find my way back to the military base if I got lost.

    Other languages that I’ve been exposed to and picked up a handful of words/phrases, but never seriously attempted to study: Italian, Arabic, Spanish, and Hawaiian.

  • @[email protected]
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    109 months ago

    (Spanish):
    Mi lengua materna es el español.

    (English):
    I speak English as my second language.

    (French):
    Je parle rançais aussi, me pas aussi bien que l’anglais. (Ouais je sais, ce n’était pas un accident)

    (Japanese):
    日本語も できるよ。2年ぐらい 勉強している。実際、去年 日本語能力試験を受けて、N4が できた。言語は 勉強の頑張れば、頑張るほど、よくできるよ。

    (Russian?):
    When I was in highschool I started learning russian, but since then I’ve forgotten most of it, I can only say hi, good (morning/afternoon/evening) and other easy things. I don’t have a russian keyboard but it’s ‘Privyet’, ‘Dobraye utra’, ‘Dobrij bchyer’, ‘Spakoinai nochi’, ‘Spasiba’, ‘Izvinitye, ya nye ponimayu, ya nye goborit po-russkij’, ‘ya nichyevo nye snayu’.

    (German?):
    Ich lerne Deutch im Moment mit meine Freundin. Aber ich bin nicht gut.

    Si quieres algunas observaciones… “¿Qué idiomas hablan ustedes?” Sería lo correcto (de acuerdo a la RAE). Creo que utilizaste la conjugación de la segunda persona singular del verbo hablar “tú hablas”, en vez del plural “ustedes hablan”. Et en français, je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais mon cerveau me dit que “¿Quelles langues parlez vous?” Va mieux. Und auf Deutch, ich denke dass “Welche Sprachen sprechen sie?” richtiger ist.

    • @[email protected]
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      49 months ago

      How do you learn kanji?

      I lived for some time in Japan so I learned to talk and to read the kanji useful in the everyday life (like in the restaurant or the bus). But I feel like reading the news is still too hard and I do not even know where to start.

      • @[email protected]
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        9 months ago

        I have a dictionary app called ‘akebi’ that shows me the words, the kanjis and the stroke order; and I also use google keyboard with the onscreen-drawing pad for japanese, so every kanji and kana I wrote on my previous comment was hand drawn by me. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but it really helps.

        Also, learning about the origins of kanji, it’s radicals and history helps a lot, you’ll start creating connections in your head about pronunciation and meaning. You’ll associate meaning and sound to kanjis a lot faster that way. I’ve come to the point of hearing a word, learning it’s meaning and then I come up with the possible kanjis that make it up, and surprisingly I’m right 60 to 80% of the time!

        Try calligraphy too. I learned all the kanjis that originated hiragana, and sometimes I see them in the wild and immediately know their pronunciation (60% of the time)

        I’ts a matter of patience, and motivation, A LOT of motivation.

      • @[email protected]
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        39 months ago

        The best way to do it is to try reading an article and stop at every kanji you don’t know to look it up. It’s a slow process but the struggle’s what makes it easier to remember. Maybe try it with manga first as the panels help give context to what’s being said and the shounen stuff has hiragana above the kanji to help look it up.

  • @[email protected]
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    59 months ago

    Mi parolas iomete da Esperanton, y yo hablo tambien un poquito Español, pero medyo fluent ako sa Pilipino, ang wika taga sa Pilipinas. I’m pretty good at English, too.

  • tmpodM
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    59 months ago

    I’m a native Portuguese speaker, fluent in English and can understand Spanish and French. Despite having had 3 years of French in school, I can no longer speak properly, and my writing is really bad, but I can understand pretty well. Spanish just comes to me because of the similarities with Portuguese, I never formally learned it.

    • @[email protected]
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      39 months ago

      Same as you, but little Japanese here…

      School languages are absolutely worthless unless you kept practising afterwards. You generally aren’t there wanting to learn and don’t have natural conversation partnerships to practice with.

      • tmpodM
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        29 months ago

        Yeah, exactly! I was quite amazed at how fast my French degraded after I stopped having classes.

  • Mister Neon
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    89 months ago

    I know enough Spanish to embarrass myself. I know enough of Nahuatl to understand some glyphs. I speak English at an American level, which is greasy.

  • Zagorath
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    39 months ago

    English is the only language I’m even vaguely proficient in, really.

    Le francais est le loin ma deuxieme langue la plus forte. Mais ce n’est toujours pas tres bon, et je dois passer beaucoup de temps pour ecrire dans francais, et generalement rechercher quelques mots ou expressions. Mais ma grammaire est assez bonne, je pense.

    I also spent a few years learning Spanish, but almost none of it stuck. And a few years learning Korean while living in Korea. I learnt a few of the necessary words and phrases relating to restaurants and taxis, and some very rudimentary grammar. And being able to read the script is a neat party trick. And one year of actual Vietnamese education + a few more years of peripheral exposure to the language while I lived there. Even less of it stuck than the Spanish though.

  • HubertManne
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    29 months ago

    I mean. im not so good at english as a native speaker. near the end of college my friend and I traded transcripts and his comment was. you get pretty good grades. oh except in spanish. when I had classes that were straight up english classes I similarly did not do well.

  • @[email protected]
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    19 months ago

    German (native), English (not native-level but compared to my work colleagues I might as well be lol) and some American Sign Language (I can carry a simple conversation as long as I may fingerspell words I don’t know yet/anymore)

  • @[email protected]
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    69 months ago

    Euskaraz hitz egiten dut. (Basque language: I speak Basque)

    Spanish is also my mother tongue. As you can see, I also speak English.

  • madjo
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    59 months ago

    Nederlands is my native language. And I speak English, some German and I can make a fool of myself in French. And I can order a beer in Spanish and thank you for it.

  • @[email protected]
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    79 months ago

    你會哪些語言?(Traditional Chinese)

    That’s about it. I am an interpreter and translator between English and Chinese.