I have the foreign language skills of a pre-schooler. It's no use trying to impress me with your expansive vocabulary. So, while I do need you to explain how I can get to the toilet, I’m unlikely to need any tips on how to use it or the fact that I need to close the door behind me. I may have the foreign language skills of a two-year old, but I’m a grown-up woman and, in most other contexts, I’m a reasonably intelligent one. You need to come at it from another angle like a translation app, dictionary (both of which I have) or some visual aid.Like pointing at some mud. I know you need to explain to me that the volcano hike will be muddy, but if I don’t understand the word for mud, simply repeating it over and over isn’t going to make any difference. It’ll just make you look stupid and make me feel more incompetent than I already do. Uttering the same incomprehensible words but louder is not going to make me any more likely to understand. If you possess one of those lovely, quirky regional accents, hit the slow button about ten more times more. So, how slow should you go with someone who’s learning a language? If you sound a little silly, you’ve probably got it about right. And it doesn’t seem to matter how many times I implore “Can you speak more slowly please.” As soon as the conversation hots up, the snail-paced speak stops. I've lost count of the times, when, after a few slow greetings, the person I'm speaking to hits the fast forward button. But if that’s the case, why don’t more people do it? You might think this is so ridiculously obvious that it doesn’t need saying. And in the spirit of understanding – both linguistic and otherwise – I'm putting out this call to the people whose language I'm butchering: a guide on how to speak to someone who doesn’t speak your language.Īnd for all you native English speakers out there, you might want to take this guide into account next time someone from another country struggles to ask you for directions too. It’s not proven entirely impossible – I certainly know more than when I began – but given the amount of time I’ve spent in the Spanish-speaking world, my lingo skills should be much, much better.īut I'm trying. I have a missing brain cell…actually, there’s discussion between my family and friends that I might be missing more than one, but there’s a particular brain cell I’d like to talk about – the one that covers learning a language.Įver since I first set foot in Spain, then Latin America, I’ve been trying, painfully slowly and with a great deal of difficulty, to learn Spanish.
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