Mad respect dude.
I try to do that, as well. Just for the courtesy of trying to speak in the lingua franca for locals. Itâs pretty easy in the Americas, thereâs 4 languages; English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
The only one I have yet to brush up on is the Portuguese since Iâve yet to go near Brazil and any Brazilians I meet usually know English good enough.
I usually get gratitude for putting in that minimal effort from the Central Americans who I try to speak to in Spanish, but most just opt for English.
Must be a nice way of saying that Iâm awful at it, honestly.
The only folks who ever got tilted about my efforts are the Quebecois and theyâre⊠a world unto their own. If you think Texas is a microcosm in North America, they have nothing on Quebec.
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My fathers uncle lives in Toronto, but his first wife was from Montreal and âFrench Canadianâ first and âfirst nation Canadianâ 2nd.
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â'Ello, ich möchte eine Beschwerde einreichen.â
Not sure the cockney colloquialism of Hello translates. 
This is a bit betterâŠ
âNein, nein, er ist nicht tot, er ist, er ruht sich aus! Bemerkenswerter Vogel, das Norwegische Blau, was sollâs, oder? Schönes Gefieder!â
Hours of fun and helps learning German.
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On topicâŠ
Fluent English, passable German and French. Currently learning Welsh.
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Iâve spent many years trying to learn Japanese. My lovely wife is Japanese. My daughter and wife speak Japanese 70% of the time that they occupy the same room. That switches to 50% when I am also in the room. Iâve just finished Unit 5 of Pimsleurâs Japanese. Thatâs 60 hours if played straight. But I have repeated almost every lesson 2-3 times. Earlier I tried DuoLingo. Plus dozens of books over the years. Yet, despite all that wheel-turning, I hardly speak a word. I no longer judge myself harshly for the lack of aptitude. I do some things quite well. And thereâs plenty still on my bucket list. Another language is no longer one of them.
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But I think that you speak the language of love. That is all your family needs, aviator san.
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Have you tried the Genki 1 and 2 series of books+workbooks? Theyâre aimed at college students but they are the absolute best for practical, beginner Japanese. Most of these recent apps like DuoLingo are just rehashes of that ancient Rosetta Stone software. Theyâre good for rote memorization of contextless tidbits of language, but not for much else. Language needs to be learned in meaning-focused chunks that accomplish some kind of task or goal.
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This canât be emphasized enough. Language is a living thing, itâs a culture, and if youâre just memorizing phrases to mirror phrases in your native language, you arenât actually learning a language. Youâre just learning to cough up phrases.
Youâre a soundboard made of meat, essentially.
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Mein Luftkissenfahrzeug ist voller Aale!
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To add to the data set: 
- Native Dutch speaker.
- Fluent in both Polish and English.
- Understand most German, but when speaking I usually fall into some Polish-Dutch mishmash
- Had 6 years of French and 2 years Spanish in highschool. But somehow not a lot has stuck.
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Thatâs actually a curious questionâŠwhat did everyone âlearnâ in school but none of it stuck? Latin was compulsory for me in 8th grade and I hated it. In high school my choices were continuing Latin, Spanish, or French. I went with French for two years and the only things I can remember are saying I canât speak French and asking if someone can speak English.
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I have! Theyâre great. And quite fun. If language were a written thing, Iâd enjoy it more and might even make some progress. The spoken word though. I hate it. My wife can say the simplest food-related small talk as we cook together in the kitchen and I just donât understand. Japanese pronunciation is easy. But my brain is unable to separate strings of syllables into their composite words.
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Ah, separating the words can be tough. Probably tougher when the person speaking to you doesnât know exactly how much youâve progressed through the books.
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Ugh, my school tried to teach me English- but the teachers were terrible**.
Beside that- I did a 4-week immersion vacation in the USA, when I was 17 and THAT made English click for me.
Was in the Pennsylvania/Pittsburgh area- Aspinwall to be precise.
I was actually thinking about that summer, right this morning. Was like living in a movie.
**This HIGH SCHOOL teacher was a properly-named-female-gendered-dog.
I might have told this story already but here it goes: Somehow in a lesson the concept of âHanging upâ the phone comes up and she said casually
-âHang upâ means answering the phone.
And I was - well no, hanging up means placing the phone back on its cradle. It means the conversation is over. âPick upâ the phone means answeringâŠ
Oh boy we started proper conflict. She was adamant she was right and I knew for a fact she was wrong.
Now- I donât know if that PNFGD was angry I called out her mistake (but I swear i didnât do it in a blatant or annoying way!) or if she genuinely got confused but of course the entire class sided with her and everyone got heated up and piled up on me.
Knowing not, yet, when to pick my battles - and thanks to my Mediterranean blood - I got rightfully infervorated and defended my position verbally.
When it achieved nothing, I honestly asked to (and I quote myself) âGo ahead and mimic the sentence âHang upâ and âPick upâ the phone with your hands!â.
If she was upset before- she became outright hostile at that. THAT for me was the moment when she realized she was wrong, but I guess sunken cost fallacy, and she kept her position on that hill.
When obviously I realized she wouldnât budge I simply quit the argument.
Two weeks later, we had again English at the last period and when everyone left the room she held me back and with an expression halfway between âsupremely annoyedâ and âRBFâ (resting B**ch face) in low voice admitted I was right but there was no reason to get so out of my way to make such nuisance in the class next time.
I kept my RMF (resting Murderer face) and without saying anything just left.
I would have honestly spit in her face, but alas.
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Same here 
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All the Japanese I know I learned from watching my Kurosawa Blu-ray discs. No joke.
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Love the stories in this thread! I didnât want to miss anything, but now that I got to the bottom, I can finally give you my data:
- Dutch, native
- English, not perfect but close enough to think in English often and inadvertently switch to it
- French, good enough to have been asked « Vous ĂȘtes de quelle rĂ©gion ? » (âWhich region are you from?â) while making small talk once. And Iâll never stop bragging about that.
---- This is where Iâd draw the line for fluency ---- - German, good enough to make myself understood and look like an ass. I had 2 years in school and recently finished the Duolingo course. As for listening, I can understand about half the Germans. Unfortunately, the only German in the family mumbles with so little articulation that he is firmly in the other half.
- Small bits and bobs of other languages that I picked up on Duolingo, mostly around the time I travelled there: Spanish, Danish. Can speak absolute basics but listening⊠nah.
- I have been wanting to learn an Eastern European language for a while. I understood that Polish and Ukrainian are both very hard (and many Poles understand German). A few weeks back I started the Romanian course on Duolingo. The cat we adopted from there still meows in Romanian (verified, but Iâll save that story for another post), and itâs a romance language, similar to French and Italian, with bits of Slavic.
As for how I learned French so well: I started learning it in school at a younger age than most. Was lucky enough to be picked when I was 11 for a small group of kids who got French courses instead of some of the basics (Dutch, maths). It also helped that my parents took me on vacation to France once or even twice a year during my teenage years, and that dad was brushing up on his French around the same time.
I did well in French at school and ended up getting a DELF B2 (that allows you to enroll in French universities) certificate at the end of high school. Thatâs more than 10 years ago though, so it takes a bit of immersion to get back to that level.
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