I would simply say: [subject] [particle] wakaranai.
For example:
英語が分からない - Ei go ga wakaranai. - I don’t understand English
スペイン語が分からない - Supein go ga wakaranai - I don’t understand Spanish
日本語が分からない - Nihon go ga wakaranai - I don’t understand Japanese
Are you sure about that? I refrained from posting because I wasn’t, but I think it’s linguâ latinâ non loquor (lit. “I do not speak with the Latin tongue,” with the word for “tongue” also being the word for “language”).
By the way, hibernicus’s “literal” version of the Irish isn’t 100% literal. Word by word, it’s “Not-is Irish at-me.” *Níl *X agam is how you say you don’t have something, but technically the verb is “to be” (and etymologically, this particular form of the verb comes from “to see,” which makes it even weirder. Irish is awesome).
You’re right, I forgot about how many different dialects there are in China. Speaking as someone from Taiwan, it didn’t occur to me that “Chinese” might mean different dialects instead of just an all-encompassing Mandarin. I guess the difference between me and **jjimm **is where we grew up or where we learned Chinese.
Don’t take my spelling of Chinese words as anything official. I just try to sound it out and finagle a passable English spelling. I’ve never studied Pinyin or the proper way to convert Chinese words to English, so my “tzong” is just my own personal spelling. I speak Chinese with parents and people of the older generation but my formal learning stopped around when I was 6 or 7. Its such a difficult language anyway that I don’t think I’ll ever get any more advanced that I am now
Not in the least, no.
I’m reasonably certain you don’t need to add “lingua”, “latinus” is its own word. However, I’m confused by Wiktionary - apparently, there’s a specific construct, which is not part of the regular declension of “latinus”, to mean “in Latin” or “in the Latin tongue”- Latine.
Is it something the Romans did, is it some Low Latin bastardization, is it something that jokers came up with in the 14th century ? No clue.
All I know is that “Latinus” means Latin (as in the language), that it’s a second declension word, that in the context of the sentence “I don’t speak Latin” the word Latin should take the accusative (… right ?) and that the accusative of Latinus is Latinum.
That is the extent of my current knowledge of Latin. I may have used to know more, but then again I might not have because I only paid attention for two years out of six.
:smack: Of course! Können! I’m glad I got the conjugation right anyway. It’s been a long time since I had to exercise my German grammar. I can still do this in about three seconds flat though: der-des-dem-den, die-der-der-die, das-des-dem-das, die-der-den-die.
Of course, I still left out the “nicht.”
I’d be interested to see how you get those Japanese characters. 
Someone I know wrote out “gomen nasai” (“excuse me”) in hiragana. Can that be written in the more elaborate characters (rather than using the syllabaries)?
御免なさい. I’m not aware of any kanji for “nasai” but someone else might know.
Edited: you could try this:
御免為さい
My computer is set to allow me to switch back and forth between roman characters and kana on the fly with a press of a key on my keyboard.
Certainly. Hiragana auto-converts to kanji, and sometimes katakana, as I type and, usually, selects the correct kanji based on context.
But isn’t it true to say that gomen nasai is usually written in hiragana? The IME’s first suggestion is hiragana, and no. 2 has kanji for gomen but not for nasai. So it’s not straightforward to say what the “correct kanji” is in this instance.
Good point! It didn’t even occur to me that my “literal” translation was still idiomatic.
And I learned something new from you today. I never knew that the irregular forms níl and an bhfuil had any connection with “to see”. Thanks for that!
That just means “I don’t understand”. The question was how you would say “I can’t understand”, and the correct way to say this is not “wakarenai”, it’s “rikai dekinai”. As in: “彼はなぜ日本語が未だに分からないのか、理解できない。” -> “I just can’t understand why he still doesn’t understand Japanese.”
I tried a Google search for “御免為さい”, and just as I thought, the only people who write it this way are l33t and foreigners. In a formal settings, “御免なさい” is OK, but otherwise it’s written in hiragana. Google returns 2,600,000 hits for “御免なさい” versus a massive 96,400,000 for “ごめんなさい”.
Of course you can say this, but I think it is less common for someone to say “I can’t understand Japanese” than “I don’t understand Japanese.” Splitting hairs, I know, but rikai dekinai, to me, feels more like an incapacity to understand than simply a present inability to undertand. Also, “I don’t understand” is simpler. 分かった？ [spoiler] Understand?[/spoiler]Getting back to the OP, however, the way to say “I don’t speak Japanese” would either be “Nihon go ga hanashimasen” or, more commonly and less formally “Nihon go ga hanasanai.” And yes, you could prefix it with “boku wa” for a boy, “atashi wa” for a girl, “ore wa” if you want to sound ‘street’, or even “watashi wa” for a more formal presentation, but personal pronouns are very infrequently used in Japanese.
I agree with you on this one, although when speaking, as just a personal preference, I typically say “ごめんね” instead of “ごめんなさい.”
You just repeated what I said. My post was in reply to the grammatically-incorrect “wakarenai”.
Unless you’re talking to a child, or you’re a teacher talking to a pupil, saying “分かった?” after explaining something is actually rude. Unless you’re on 2-chan, Japanese internet posters will speak to each other in the polite form. Similarly, depending on who you are speaking to, and what you are apologising about, saying “ごめんね” instead of “ごめんなさい” may also be inappropriate.
I’m only writing all this to thouroughly scare off potential learners of the language. 
Actually, ‘gomen nasai’ is more like I’m sorry than excuse me. For ‘excuse me’, I use ‘sumimasen’, even though it’s really just a more formal way to say ‘I’m sorry’. For example, if I’m in an elevator standing behind someone and need to reach over them to press the button for my floor, I would say ‘sumimasen’, never ‘gomen nasai’. However, if I accidentally nick someone in the neck with my umbrella as I’m walking down the street, I’d say ‘gomen nasai’, of course followed by ‘daijoubudesuka’ to check if they’re okay and to show courtesy, but I’d never say ‘sumimasen’ in that situation.
You can also use ‘shitsureshimasu’ for ‘excuse me’, although I’d typically use ‘shitsureshimasu’ when entering a room or other enclosed space, especially when I’m not being expected and I know others are there.
Ah, reading back up to your post (#30) I see you did, indeed, make the same point. I’d missed that. However, wakaranai is not grammatically incorrect.
Yeah, in retrospect, that was probably a bit uncalled for. 
Until familiarity sets in, then it’s all slang all the time.
From a formality perspective, yes.
And you’re doing a good job.
I brought this question up because of a cartoon in Cracked I found; the “cause of the Russian-Japanese War” (1905). Facetiously, it shows a Russian government official angry because a Japanese government official has trod on his toe. The artist knew nothing about Russian or Japanese script; I wanted to replace the ersatz dialog with the proper dialog–the Russian for “You clumsy idiot!” and the Japanese for “excuse me.”
Great thread. OP, I hope you post your “final” result, with transliterations for every one, (with a note that they are intended for English readers–a Spanish person would read an “i” as “ee”, for example).
I suppose it does depend on dialect. The way I was taught it would sound more like: now fall-oo port-oo-gaysh.
Anyway in Farsi it would be: “Man Farsi-ra na mi donam” which is “I don’t know Farsi” or “Man Farsi-ra harf na mi zanam” which is “I don’t speak Farsi.”
I know you speak Japanese much better than me so I’m sorry to correct you, but it would have to be “nihongo ga hanasemasen”. What you wrote means “Japanese doesn’t speak”.
Actually, what I wrote does mean “I don’t speak Japanese”, but you are correct.
‘Hanesemasen’ as the negative potential conjugation of hanasu (to speak) means the inability to speak, where as ‘hanashimasen’ as the negative present indicative conjugation means to choose not to speak, therefore, ‘nihon go ga hanasemasen’ is correct use for someone who does not currently have the ability to speak Japanese.