What’s the right way to say in German “I haven’t spoken German in 15 years”? Is it “Ich habe kein Deutsch gesprochen seit 15 Jahre?”
I know this construction has some subtle variations and is easy to screw up, and I don’t have my German textbook (for 15 years, in fact). So I thought I’d take it to the experts.
“Ich habe seit 15 Jahren kein Deutsch mehr gesprochen.” is a more natural word order. If you want to say that you haven’t spoken German in 15 years but you did before that, you might want to add the “mehr” but it’s not really necessary.
<non-native speaker currently separated from reference books and native speaker helpline>
Looks pretty OK to me, apart from the word order.
I would say ‘Ich habe seit 15 Jahren kein Deutsch gesprochen.’
But I could well be wrong, and just missing the nuances that you refer to. What nuances are you thinking of, by the way?
</non-native speaker etc…>
The word order that comes most naturally to my tongue is, “Seit fünfzehn Jahren habe ich kein Deutsch gesprochen.” But any of the versions given here, Surok’s, Kellner’s or mine, are good.
I have nothing new to add to this, but as another native speaker of German all of the versions above sound good to me, too. Yours, Brain Wreck, ain’t bad either, apart from the missing “n” on “Jahren”. (adverbialer Akkusativ?)
Vielen dank, everyone. And thanks for the compliment, since, you know, ich habe seit 15 Jahren kein Deutsch gesprochen.
Actually I’ll be meeting some German people in a few weeks, and I wanted to make sure I got that statement out in the open before I proceed to mangle everything else I try to say.
Ich habe auch seit 15 Jahren kein Deutsch gesprochen. 
On a related, note, what is the proper way to say, “I only speak a little German”?
A direct word for word translation, off the top my head would be, “I spreche nur ein bisschen Deutsch.” I’m sure this is incorrect and/or awkward, though.
Babel Fish offers: “Ich spreche nur Deutsches wenig.”
What sounds most natural?
Ich spreche nur ein bisschen Deutsch would sound natural. Alternatively Ich spreche nur wenig Deutsch. I must restrain myself from mentioning more nuanced variants - after all, expressing it too elaborately would put the lie to the statement 
Oh, and the Babelfish variant is ludicrous.
I’ve always liked “I speak little or no German” – “Ich klein oder kein deutsche spreche”
Thanks!
“Ich kann nur wenig Deutsch.”
The “kann” is all the verb you need; while it wouldn’t be incorrect to add “sprechen” to the end of the sentence it’s not necessary as it’s understood.