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Uh, I don't speak Italian...

If someone tries to speak to me in any language part from English/Swedish I will just say I do not understand that language.
If it is on the internet I will just leave that page or if on an forum/social media not read it.
 
I just nod. I do that with English speakers too. I don't have good hearing.

Talli said:
If someone tries to speak to me in any language part from English/Swedish I will just say I do not understand that language.
If it is on the internet I will just leave that page or if on an forum/social media not read it.
Click to expand...

Hei, hvor er du? Kan du forstå Norsk? Jeg har hørt de er nær nok for folk å forstå egen språk.
 
Just repeat 'yes' in whatever language it sounds like they're using until they get frustrated and walk off. I once said 'si' to a guy talking to me in Spanish for a good 3 minutes before he got angry and stormed away it was awesome and I'm not sorry.
 
Most people understand English in addition to whatever foreign language they may speak, at least where I live. So if someone starts speaking a language I don't know to me, saying "I'm sorry, I don't understand" usually gets the point across. Otherwise, a quizzical expression works, too.

There have been a few occasions when people speak Mandarin to me and I'm a little embarrassed/don't want to admit that I don't really understand it (I'm Cantonese and sometimes people just assume I speak Mandarin too), so I'll just smile and nod when appropriate, which usually gets me through the short, random conversations strangers strike up sometimes. If I don't feel like it, again, the "I'm sorry, I don't understand" line works too.

If it's on the internet, if I really care about the topic or something, I'll put the text through an online translator. I know they're not accurate, but you can generally piece together the keywords and sort of understand what they're saying.
 
Personally, I find a different language that I don't clearly understand quite a hassle and frankly I just do what any person does... smile, nod and err- more smiles but recently I've been given the choice to pick between Italian, Korean or French to learn and I jut went with French 'cause amour. c:
 
Honestly it's not too hard to talk to people who speak in another language. A few weeks ago, I was in Guatemala helping build schools for their country and providing medical attention for their country's sick. We were working with the Guatemalan Army's engineers as well as the locals and their kids liked to hang out with us on the job sites. All you really have to do is use body language. If they came up to me and said something in spanish I would just say 'no hablo espanol' (which I think I means I don't speak spanish, but I have no freakin' idea). And it got to the point where we would we knew each other names and would joke around with each other ( I will never forget little Gabriel, who is a 6 year old little Guatemalan girl who was at the job site with us everyday, walking up to us and drawing a dick in the sand. I don't know who taught her how to do that, but she did it.) but we still never understood a word of what each other was saying. We could buy things from the vendors around without any problems, the language barrier was never really an issue.
 
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