Communicating with non-English speakers.

Well, I've learned three other languages that aren't my native language.

Since I already spoke Spanish, Portuguese was a hit or miss for me. I could understand what the other person was telling me and vice-versa, due to the explosive amounts of cognates. Dinero is dinheiro in Portuguese. No brainer there :lol:. Anyway, I would only use Google Translate to figure out the correct pronunciation. Otherwise, I would just ask the person themselves because Google Translate usually is wrong :lol:

 

I had a Chinese roommate on year who spoke very broken english. So, sometimes when she did not understand something, I would use google translate so that she could understand better. She said that translations were not totally correct, but they were close enough that she could get what I was going for.

 

I was working for this out of state company. For whatever reason the Company men they brought were native Spanish speakers; Where English was their second language. While us locals only spoke English. Luckily, most of them spoke English pretty well. 'Cept one guy, my favorite one of 'em. He was native born American, but moved to Galicia, young. I got paired with him a lot. It wasn't so bad we couldn't communicate. I'd used a lot of hand gestures, Simple words, and cuss words to get my points across. I noticed near the end I would use broken English when talking to him, just because it was easier for him.

 

When I was 20-21 (way pre google), I was stationed in Germany with the US Army. I found it interesting to try to talk to Germans in person. I learned a little German in the 2 week crash course the Army taught us, and most Germans learned English in school. When I struggled with a word, I just had to ask them what the German word was for the English word I was thinking of. In some cases showing them something, or gesturing something helped.

It was really interesting keeping my 1977 Mercedes running, I would often have to remove the part I needed from the car, go to the parts store and ask "Ich brauche diese bitte", I would generally ask how to say the part Auf Deutsch, so I increased my vocabulary.

Google almost makes it too easy.

 

Using what little Spanish I know:

Google: How are you?
Me: Good.
Google: What's your name?
Me: Nychthemeron. What's yours?
Google: My name Google.
Me: Nice to meet you, Google.
Google: My pleasure. Like watching movies?
Me: No. Do you?
Google: Yes I do. I love watching movies.
Me: Cool. Which ones?
Google: I dunno.
Me: Oh.
Google: My mom and dad are very intelligent and hardworking. My mom and my dad is a cop is a doctor.
Me: ... cool...

...

I can't even hold up a conversation with myself.

 

I have spoken with foreign speakers quite often and because im trying to learn Swedish me and my Sweden friend have switch days where we speak in Swedish and its quite fun.

 

When I went to Denmark a few years ago on a family holiday, we ended up in a very remote place where they only spoke Danish and a smattering of German. We didn't know any Danish or German so our communication mainly consisted of gestures and a few random English-esque words.

We managed to get by.

 

I've had quite a lot of conversations using Google Translate, both of a personal nature and at work. Whilst the grammar and syntax is often not quite right I generally find that it does pretty well at getting the message across.

Like most technology these days, it's amazing how much virtual translation systems have progressed. It's incredible that we can basically communicate with anyone anywhere in the world (with internet access) without knowing a single word of their language.

 

Where I work I've had to talk to people who chose not to use an interpreter and handle the conversation themselves with what little English they do know. Mostly I would try to ask as many yes and no questions as I could since it was easier to understand the answer

 

i have some experience when i've been travelling, and showing around exchange students/recent immigrants/etc.

when i was in japan on an exchange about a year ago, i had taken two japanese classes in high school, and i could understand a fair amount of what everyone was saying (though it took me a while to get used to the informal language and slang), but i couldn't (and still can't) formulate responses very well. it's hard for me to get the sentence structure right when i'm talking. but i was with my friend who is fluent (she's self-taught), and all the people we met spoke a bit of english and were eager to practice on us, so communicating wasn't too bad.

french is kind of hit or miss for me. i can understand and speak a lot about certain subjects (ie: about school, travel/hotels, canada/history, etc), but outside of those, i'm lost. though when i was in quebec, i was at a restaurant with sister, speaking to the waiter in french, and he didn't pick up on the fact that me and my sister spoke english as our first language until he overheard us talking to each other. which was awesome :lol:

 

My parents are native speakers of Vietnamese. I'm not fluent in Vietnamese, yet I must communicate with them in that language. There are some words that I don't know how to say, so Google Translate helps in those situations.

 

I find Google Translate usually wrong, but I use to check the spelling, or just a word, a full sentence most of the times is translated with mistakes. I tend to "speak" in english when I communicate with someone on the internet, and it's not the first time that I encounter a fellow spanish speaker and we hadn't noticied before.
When I went to Portugal, I prepared first and yes, some words are shocking because the meaning is like the opposite so I was very careful about what I wrote/said in case I said something very wrong.

 

I have tried to communicate with Japanese students that came to my school. They knew a little English and I knew a little Japanese. My food tech group got chosen to cook kangaroo burgers with the Japanese students. I got stuck on washing up and didn't get to get photos! When I get nervous I speak really fast and I was too scared to speak Japanese in a room full of Japanese people. So yeah I was trying to say thank you, lets go eat. But I talked to fast. I could almost understand what the Japanese teachers were saying.

I want to learn Japanese, I wanted to have it as my elective next year and also do my own studies or one at the local education center. I really want to learn 2 languages besides English (which I still struggle with).

 

My sister used to talk to this boy over Skype and he's from Brazil. He was trying to learn English for her but it was difficult for him lol XD
They would teach each other how to say certain words in Portuguese/English, and if he didn't understand something he would say "You can write" and she would type it for him to translate. It wasn't perfect but it held up nicely ^^

 

I am talking to many people in a language that I don't understand quite well right now on this community. I don't need the google translator as much as before, so I've made a good progress, I guess.

 

You're doing well What is your first language, if I might ask?

 

I do it every day at work.

You just learn to understand human hand movements a lot more and bad accents.

 

Spoke to? No, but there are plenty of people I have worked with who only speak Spanish (I'm English only). There have been many times that I have had to learn/ teach someone something. Verbal language would have been helpful but if both sides are willing to try, you would be amazed how much information you can share without it.