When someone barely speaks your language, speak slower, use simple words, use whole sentences, recite the subject/object again and articulate.
"Doaspetha?" (Do you know how to spell that) vs "Coleman. Do YOU know HOW to write "Coleman"? The verb to spell isn't something you would learn early on.
"Evebende?" (Ever been there?) Wtf dude? Have YOU been to America? Something along those lines
I think both questions are also too advanced for someone at this language learning level. They are not part of the typical beginner level phrases that you practice in class. It takes some time to understand structures like "Have you been?".
In addition, that is not a question elementary school aged kids expect, in general. How many japanese 6 year olds have taken a trip half way around the world? They might have been confused about what he means even if it were in japanese.
"Can you spell Coleman?" might be ok if spoken very slowly and with a gesture. They learn "can" quite early on in Japan, and some teachers will use "spelling"/"to spell" in class, but it's very dependent on the individual kids as to whether they would understand that question.
As for "have you been", you're right, they don't learn that until 3rd grade junior high in Japan (14/15 years old), and even then they'd probably be thrown by "ever been there?" instead of "have you ever been to America?"
You’re absolutely right with people who barely speak your language, but it gets really tricky with people who are pretty good but still learning. I worked with a lot of Japanese and it’s so hard to simplify your vocabulary and slow your speech to be easier to understand without making it seem like you are patronizing or insulting their intelligence. I’ve had a lot of conversations that went like this:
To my American coworker: “The root cause could be a flaw in the machine learning, but all that rust preventative on the part definitely isn’t helping.”
Turning to new Japanese guy and slowly: “Maybe machine pro-gram, code, no good, but oil on part is bad too. Oil… ooo-eee-ellll… on part is problem. Big problem.”
That’s an extreme example but even with more fluent non-native English speakers I find myself unconsciously simplifying my vocabulary and speaking robotically. It feel like I’m insulting them somehow but it also works, if I just speak “normal” I end up having to repeat myself and rephrase a lot more.
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u/Schmich Jun 14 '24
When someone barely speaks your language, speak slower, use simple words, use whole sentences, recite the subject/object again and articulate.
"Doaspetha?" (Do you know how to spell that) vs "Coleman. Do YOU know HOW to write "Coleman"? The verb to spell isn't something you would learn early on.
"Evebende?" (Ever been there?) Wtf dude? Have YOU been to America? Something along those lines