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> Like when you say an English sentence to a Mexican who doesn't understand it, and you respond by saying the same thing again but louder and slower. It looks l
by leesalminen 6y ago
> Like when you say an English sentence to a Mexican who doesn't understand it, and you respond by saying the same thing again but louder and slower. It looks like you think they're dense.
My wife is learning Spanish right now because we are moving to Costa Rica. Her most used phrase is “de espacio, por favor” which means “slowly, please”. She’s able to understand much more of the language when folks slow down and annunciate clearly.
When I lived in Chile as a teen, I also asked people to do the same thing frequently until I became proficient. I still ask sometimes in other Spanish-speaking countries because their accent or dialect differs from what my ears are most used to.
Speaking slowly and clearly to anyone learning a language is incredibly useful and is not insulting in any way.
- swilliamsio 6y agoYea, but speaking slowly and clearly is _only_ useful to anyone learning the language. If I spoke to you in Klingon, and you don't understand Klingon. Would speaking to you in Klingon slower and louder help you? Undoubtedly, no, it would instead make me a rude person.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoDepends. English is somewhat special in that it's the current lingua franca, so almost everyone has some exposure to it - and at the same time, it's a hodge-podge of words from different language families, so it's quite likely that an English speaker can pick out some words they understand from another language, if spoken slowly ("false friends" notwithstanding). So whether you're speaking English so someone who doesn't know it, or someone is speaking a language you don't know to you-the-English-speaker, there's stochastic benefit in slowing down. It's the same phenomenon as within language families. I don't know Ukrainian, but I can pick up words that share etymology with Polish words, assuming they speak slowly enough for me to isolate individual words. Similarly, I don't know much German, but I can route individual words through English.
- zeroego 6y agoI had a similar experience while learning German. Berliners talk very quickly and I'd frequently request "Sprechen Sie langsam, bitte" aka speak slowly please. Unfortunately they'd usually switch to English after that, but when the speaker would stick it out with me I'd come away feeling like I'd gotten a little better with the language.