I use American Sign Language as my primary language, which means almost everyone around me speaks a different language.
As a fluent sign language user, I can communicate easily with almost any deaf person in the world—the visual properties of out language makes it easier to communicate across languages even if our signs are different. That’s a huge irony—I can’t talk to the guy at the table next to me, but I can talk with deaf people around the world. I have IRL friends living in at least 20 other countries.
How do I communicate on a daily basis? In writing, gestures, through an interpreter, using my iPhone, etc. I manage to communicate with almost anyone who is willing to communicate with me. I move forward to communicate with nearly anyone, but other peoples’ attitudes pretty much determine whether we communicate or not—it goes 2 ways.
Americans are one of the worst people to work with when it comes to gestures—if they don’t know better, they often totally blank out then freak out when I try to use gestures. In my experience, Latinos and Europeans are much easier to communicate with, using gestures.