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.
Was Sprachen Sie spricht? (Deutsch/German)
I’m not a native speaker, but I’m pretty sure it’s
Welche Sprachen sprechen Sie?
assuming you want to be formal, which feels a little weird to me in the context of an internet forum.
Edit: but to answer your question: fluent English, mehr als ein Bißchen Deutsch, y un poquito Español.
ein Bißchen Deutsch
BTW, this should be written as:
ein bisschen Deutsch
We switched from ß to ss in all words with a preceding short vowel in 1996: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_der_deutschen_Rechtschreibung_von_1996
So, it’s “Fuß” and “Maß”, because those are pronounced with a long vowel, but then “Fass” and “muss” and “Biss”, because those are pronounced with a short vowel.And in this case, “bisschen” is spelled with a small “b” for reasons that I’m not entirely sure are logical. 😅
It would be spelled with a capital letter, if “Bisschen” was a unit of measurement here (i.e. a small bite), like a “Liter” is.
But because it was used so much and without really referring to a specific measurement, it eventually began being spelled lowercase, similar to “wenig” or “etwas” (“ein wenig Deutsch”, “etwas Deutsch”). Apparently, this kind of word is called an “Indefinitpronomen”.https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/bisschen
vs.
https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bisschen (much rarer)Thanks! It’s surprisingly difficult to get Germans to correct me on things. Most of them are just happy that I can speak it at all, so they tell me not to worry about the little stuff. 😂
I would like to know how a native german speaker would say it. But I would say like you
Well, if I were to post it to a community on e.g. feddit.org, I would write it as:
Welche Fremdsprachen sprecht ihr so?
“Fremdsprachen” just means “foreign languages”, since I know that responding folks speak German.
Then “sprecht ihr” rather than “sprechen Sie”, because addressing a group of people with direct pronoun is unusual in German.
As someone else already said, using “Sie” is also far too formal for this context. People refer to each other as “Du” on most of the internet.
But “Welche Sprachen sprichst Du?” still gives me vibes of a marketing firm hoping to drive engagement by referring to people directly.And then the “so”, I have no idea what that is linguistically, but it basically makes the question more casual. It invites for people to tell a story or to have a chat.
Thanks for the detailed answer. Interestingly it is pretty similar to the idiomatic way to say it in French. Except for the “so”
“So” is indeed one of those small things that’s just colloquial to casual conversation in in Germany. To me personally it signals that you weren’t as exact with your question so you’re leaving it kinda open ended to some degree. But when it comes to Grammar no clue what this is.
It feels a bit similar to “do you speak any other languages or ~” because this leaves it less as a direct question and more as an open ended conversation, suggesting you just wanna know more and you’re not very particular in your question and in what you expect as an answer.
Sehr gut, danke! Muy bien!
It is indeed normal to use ‘du’ pretty much everywhere on the internet. Even in French i never see ‘vous’ (which to me feels more common than Sie in German usually).
in addition to my native brazilian portuguese, i’m fluent in english and basic to intermediate level in spanish and french. i can understand and speak roughly some german and russian too (started the courses, but never finished). my objective is to someday learn both german and russian up to intermediate level, and then go for some arabic, mandarin, kongo, nheengatu (an old creole language that mixed tupi-guarani and portuguese) and esperanto.
English, Russian, Czech (used to be fluent, but haven’t used in a while), Mandarin (a bit, still learning)
Euskaraz hitz egiten dut. (Basque language: I speak Basque)
Spanish is also my mother tongue. As you can see, I also speak English.
Parlo italiano da madrelingua, and i speak english decently(mostly informal and internet/'murican slang).
I studied a little Spanish in middle school but forgot it, mostly.
Mi parolas la Esperanton tre malbone.
- Polish
- German
- Swedish
- English
And I’m learning Korean now but it’s so damn difficult it’s very frustrating.
Ah, Polish, very neat!
Native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, speaking English fluently, also speak Spanish with some moderate success and Japanese with a bit less.
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.
Mi esperis vidi tro da esperantistoj en Lemmy!
Mon français n’est pas mauvais, und mein Deutsch ist ziemlich schlecht.
Je ne sais pas si mon allemand avait un sens.
Also English lol.
English is my native tongue.
J’ai appris la français à l’école.
Rŵan dw i’n trio dysgu Cymraeg!
How are you getting on with Welsh? What are you using and have you got anyone to practise with?
Mae o’n braf! I’ve been using SaySomethingIn’s Automagic Welsh tutor. It’s really nice for being able to set your own learning pace. I haven’t really practiced with anyone in earnest, but I did take a trip to North Wales earlier this year and did ok! They were shocked that an American would choose to learn Welsh
Ah, I assume you took the chance to go to Llanfair PG then. Very good, very good.
Cool, Welsh!
Polish
English
Learning German and Spanish
English Spanish Portuguese
I want to learn Russian and Chinese
Greek, English, and I understand a bit of French, since my husband is French. I lived for 9 months in Germany too, and I could understand a bit of that too, but that was 30 years ago and I’ve forgotten most of it.
Truth is, I don’t really like verbal communication, in any language. I have trouble finding words (including my native one), it’s as if my brain is not optimized for language. It gets worse when I’m sick (I have multiple autoimmune issues), it’s as if language becomes a barrier. My husband becomes aggravated when I can’t find the right words to communicate. I wish we had telepathy, communicating with feelings.
Englisch and jeeburriche
Depends on who you ask. I’m American and went to the UK. I was looking to pick up my rental car, you know, so I could drive on the wrong side of the road and found a sign that read, “rental car collection.” I had to ask a local who was doing the collecting, because I don’t speak English. " If I was collecting the car, it’s a pick up. If they were collecting the car it’s a drop off. So…
I also butcher German and Spanish pretty well.