How do you communicate with someone when they don't speak your language?
Asked by
AshlynM (
10684
)
April 2nd, 2013
What’s been your personal experience and how do you communicate with a person that doesn’t speak your language or when you don’t speak their language?
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15 Answers
Starfleet Standard Issue Universal Translator.
We speak in third language that both of us speak, or use google translate, or with hands and feet.
Miming, hand gestures.
Also I’d say that 99% of the worlds population understands the term ‘okay’.
If you’re thirsty, just say cocacola.
If bargaining in Bangkok, we use a calculator to show the amount we want to pay / be paid. : )
Hand signals, nods, head shakes, smiles, laughter, raised eyebrows, puzzled looks, charades…
Pantomime.
Great story. One of my resident managers had a new move in who didn’t speak English. He came into the office with a maintenance complaint. The manager couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell her so she went to his apartment to SEE what the problem was.
Finally he walked straight to the dishwasher and said “broke.”
Trying to determine what the problem was she opened the door to find it full of laundry!
She laughed, and picked up a glass off his counter and put it in the dishwasher. They BOTH started laughing after that.
How did Anne Sullivan first communicate with Helen Keller? Puts things in perspective, eh?
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.
Besides gestures, pointing and facial expressions and a phrase book, I found drawing little pictures was helpful. I went to a pharmacy in Japan in need of Q-tips. Drew a little picture and got them immediately. Of course, that was an easy one. Explaining the U.S. states rights and capital punishment didn’t work quite as well, but I tried.
Speak slower and louder.
(Note: If the other person is hispanic, add an “O” to the end of each word).
I have many friends of other nationalities, and some family as well. We generally teach each other words, then speak a hybrid language until one or the other gets better.
Laugh with them NOT at them.
Also share interest in music.
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