this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Asklemmy

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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.

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[–] jbrains@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)
  • I have spoken English since birth.
  • Je parle français depuis l'âge de 7 ans, parce que je l'apprenais à l'école.
  • Estudiaba el español en la escuela secundaria.
  • Jag lär mig svenska i fler än tio år.
  • Ich kann etwas Deutsch lesen und verstehen.

And thanks to my Swedish, I can read a surprising amount of Danish and Norwegian.

I would call myself proficient in French, passable in Spanish, barely functional in Swedish, and I can get by in German in a very banal emergency. 😉

[–] folkrav@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago

“à l’école”, but otherwise flawless. You don’t see complex sentences with properly conjugated verbs from a lot of second language speakers, so I have a feeling your French is indeed pretty good.

[–] VanHalbgott@lemmus.org 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Huh…where’d you learn Swedish?

[–] jbrains@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Mostly self study from a variety of sources. I lived part time in Stockholm for four years, but it was far easier than I'd expected to speak only English, so although my reading and writing improved, my speaking and listening didn't. Every time I tried, they switched to English on me. I don't blame them.

Now I'm a bit stuck: I can't find much to listen to that's at my level. I'm past the beginner stuff but can't keep up with Swedish spoken at full speed.

[–] MacroCyclo@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago

Just go for volume. Listen to a lot of stuff at full speed and eventually it will start making sense.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Jag lär mig svenska i fler är 10 år

That sentence, while clear on what you want to communicate, is quite clearly not written by a native Swede.

I am a native Swede and this is how I would reformat it:

"Jag har studerat Svenska i mer än 10 år."

If I wanted to be less formal I'd use the slang "pluggat" instead of "studerat"

"Jag har pluggat Svenska i mer än 10 år."

[–] jbrains@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Unsurprising. I'm still well in the stage where I'm formulating thoughts in English, then translating into Swedish. Very occasionally something pops out spontaneously, fully-formed, and in Swedish.

I'm mostly thrilled to have got "i" right there, because I haven't quite memorized i/på with time expressions. It will come.

How well does your formulation convey the nuance that I've been learning (off and on, often passively), but often not actively studying? The verbs "att studera"/"att plugga" feel more to me like actively working, but of course, my feelings in this regard are more about English "study" than those Swedish words.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The suggestion I made tells others that you have actively studied the subject.

If you want to say that you have studied actively, but sporadically, you would say something like:

"Jag har väl studerat Svenska lite till och från under typ 10 år nu"

That is a causal way of saying it.

If you have only passively learned the subject, I would phrase it like this:

"De senaste 10 åren har jag hört och läst mycket Svenska, och har då lärt mig en del."

This puts focus on how you were exposed to a subject and what you learned from it

[–] jbrains@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

"till och från" is a new one for me, so thank you. I would have used "här och där".

The last formulation makes perfect sense to me. I like to think I could even have written it.

Tusentack för att du tog tid för att förklara lite.

[–] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

No notes on your German. It sounds more formal than when I'd tell a friend but it def sounds right to me.

[–] jbrains@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

Thank you. What little I can speak or write is very firmly 1980s textbook German.