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.
Native English speaker. I learned some French in school and enough Japanese to get through a judo match. I struggle to retain other languages. Everywhere I go everyone speaks English and it’s hard to justify learning a new one even everyone in a 1000 mile radius speaks English.
English. I really wish I had done better in French class during school
English, Russian, Czech (used to be fluent, but haven’t used in a while), Mandarin (a bit, still learning)
Spanish as native, English as second language, German as third
and no, German and Spanish translations of your question are wrong:
Welche Sprachen sprechen Sie?
¿Qué idiomas habla usted?
(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.
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.
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.
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.
