When you don't understand

[kujichagulia]

Every now and then, I'm talking to someone in Japanese, and I come across this situation:

OTHER PERSON: And then he said @*~&...
ME: I'm sorry... could you say that again?
OTHER PERSON: Uh... he said @*~&...
ME: Uh... could you explain what that means?
OTHER PERSON: Uh... it's #$+ >?>$#...
ME: I'm sorry... I don't understand.
OTHER PERSON: Oh.

And then the conversation dies... unless the other person knows English, then they switch over to English.

Any strategies for keeping conversations going in this situation? I've tried, but people seem to... I don't know... hold back from talking much after that, as if they're worried if I actually understand anything at all.

[Via Diva]

Ok, this comes from a socially awkward person who never talked to a foreigner in a foreign language IRL. This is the age of tech. Ask the person to write the word down/ voice input it, look it up and proceed.
Oh, wait, I forgot that people tend to complicate things.
But that's what I would do. And I would also explain that switching to English is not a solution, because if these little problems don't get eliminated, it never helps.
And if they begin to worry that you don't understand a thing, ask them if they drop the book in case they don't know a word or two.

[Serpent]

It often helps just to let the person keep talking. At your level, even if you don't understand a specific sentence etc you're likely to get the gist.

For language learners it's often better if someone is ready to rephrase/explain in L2, especially for an English speaker learning a Romance/Germanic language, for example. But sometimes translating can keep the conversation alive. If someone does know English, it's better for them to translate quickly and go back to Japanese than try to explain via Japanese a few times and only then translate and switch into English completely.

But really, just keep listening. If the detail is crucial, the native will make sure you understood. But if you ask for trouble, it will find you The native will indeed doubt everything else they say, or suddenly this random word/sentence will seem crucial to them (otherwise you wouldn't stumble). They're likely to doubt their own speech too, like whether it's standard/slow/clear enough.

Honestly it's one of the reasons I don't like speaking all that much, not in L1 either. I feel safer if I have the option to double-check the details (or take a break). Others feel safer if people are going out of their way and making sure they understand.

[emk]

Any strategies for keeping conversations going in this situation? I've tried, but people seem to... I don't know... hold back from talking much after that, as if they're worried if I actually understand anything at all.

Yeah, that can be awkward.

Here are few random ideas which might help:

1. Check out the advice in How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately. This is basically a "bluffer's guide" to carrying on a conversation in your L2, written by an FSI trainer. He suggests several things, including (a) listening for keywords you do understand, (b) getting good at changing the subject, (c) memorizing "islands" covering common conversational topics like where you come from and why you're travelling, and (d) when you need to communicate something ultra-important, simplifying your language to the basics.
2. Continue to work hard on your listening comprehension. Sometimes, I actually think it's easier to get by with excellent comprehension and dodgy speaking skills than the other way around.
3. Don't stress out too much when nearly-bilingual speakers switch to your L1. I mean, in a place like Montréal, the person who switches from French to English may, in fact, speak English just as natively as I do. Unless I can speak French fluently and comfortably, and understand everything they're saying the first time, obviously they're going to switch. So when you're still just B1 or so, it's sometimes easier to practice with people who speak your L1 badly or not at all.

It definitely gets easier as time goes on. And then you run into a "high B2ish" problem, which is that people sometimes stop treating you like a language learner ("Wow, your French is so good!") and they start getting frustrated and upset, as though you were a native speaker who was speaking unusually poorly.

[basica]

I'm of the opinion to let it slide till you're at a fairly high level. It's been my experience that knowing how to speak to someone's level is a skill, and not everyone has that skill. I am lucky in that I have some people that I speak with who dumb things down for me automatically so there is less of me trying to guess what is being said based on the words I do know.

The reason I say it's better to wait till a higher level is because a lot of people who don't have the skill of speaking to one's level will rephrase things in a still complicated way. For example they might say "I slipped a disk while doing squats at the gym Tuesday last week" and when you don't understand they'll then say something like "While I was doing squats at the gym the other day I had bad form and when crouching down I hurt my back" which is almost worse than the other one and meanwhile you're only at the level to understand the gist of the following sentence "I hurt my back last week because I did something wrong when exercising".

So let it slide, and if they ask you a question, do as VD suggested and get them to write it out, and use google translate to help you.

[mjfleck2000]

Any strategies for keeping conversations going in this situation?

Check out the advice in How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately.

This is basically a "bluffer's guide" to carrying on a conversation in your L2, written by an FSI trainer.

I have found that “How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately” can be used as a bluffer’s guide… but can also be more.
The first time I read it, I had the same impression as emk…. the book should have been named “20 ways to fake a language”. But, I realized that the author’s purpose was for the student to continue in the L2 and not switch to L1 or abandon the conversation entirely.


I have used his methods to search for understanding with my conversation partner, very often with success.

So, in your example situation:

OTHER PERSON: And then he said @*~&…
(@*~&… unrecognized word/phrase)

ME: Why do you think he said @*~&… (get the other person to talk more about the word you can repeat but don't understand!)

OTHER PERSON: Because he was (*^&m, blah, blah,blah, angry, and blah, blah, $%#$ ( I recognized the word angry in the expanation).

ME:Oh, Would you have been angry?

OTHER PERSON, Of course I would have been *^&m…


What happened is that I did not understand what @*~& meant, so I asked an OPEN-ENDED question to draw out more words from the OTHER PERSON. The hope is that within the explanation from the OTHER PERSON, I will recognize enough to figure out what @*~& means.

I have used this very technique when I was in Lima, Perú to have a wonderful conversation with a taxi driver who had recently moved from the selva (jungle) in Perú to Lima. We discussed working in Lima, learning English, learning Spanish and his native tribal language during my taxi ride. The point was to continue the conversation allowing the native speaker to have an opportunity to use other words to describe the situation. It doesn’t always work but it has proven useful to me.

Mike from Idaho

[kujichagulia]

Thank you all for your comments and advice. Very helpful stuff!

I actually have How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately, and I've used it to make "islands", which have been really helpful for my Japanese fluency, but I somehow forgot or overlooked the last chapter ("Say What?") on techniques to understand somebody. Although I have to say that I have used some of the questions he recommended in the chapter ("I'm sorry, I didn't understand the last sentence. Could you repeat it again?", etc.) several times, with unsatisfactory results. What happens 99% of the time is that, if I ask someone to repeat what they said, or rephrase it into different words, people will either switch over to English or stop talking. Very rarely does anyone actually repeat what they said, or simplify what they said, and those people tend to be one type of person: a person with a strong interest in foreigners that doesn't speak anything other than Japanese. Finding people like that in Japan is like finding gold. (OK, I overstated that a bit... there's a woman at the fitness club I go to who will also simplify her Japanese or explain it upon request, but I think she likes talking to anybody and everybody, no matter who it is. But that's also a rare type of person.)

But the chapter does also talk about what mjfleck2000 was talking about, i.e. asking open-ended questions using the information that one does understand to draw out more information until the listener can get a clearer picture of what the speaker is talking about. That is something I should probably work on a bit more, as I think that could be more effective.

And about holding back until I reach a higher level of Japanese... I really do appreciate all of the advice people have given me here. However, I live in Japan, and it is really difficult for me to hold back and not talk to anyone in Japanese. Plus, I was in an "English bubble" here for many years, and I've spent the last couple of years trying to break out of that, so I do want to speak Japanese to people whenever possible.

[Serpent]

Hold back on the details it's the same perfectionism all over again - don't be stressed about understanding everything!

[kujichagulia]

Hold back on the details it's the same perfectionism all over again - don't be stressed about understanding everything!

I thought about this today when I was talking with a teacher in the hallways of my school - although the problem wasn't so much about understanding everything as it was making myself understood. (I should start a new thread entitled: "When you don't make yourself understood." )

I had something I wanted to talk to her about, and I knew the right Japanese to start the conversation. But she is a very friendly person, and the conversation went on from there, and before long I was having trouble finding the right words to express myself. So I started holding back on the details, saying very short and simple sentences, until the conversation came to a quick end. I felt bad afterwards because I couldn't really "do my part" in the conversation. I guess that feeling is why a lot of people avoid speaking in the first place.

[Serpent]

aww but that's a bit different. embellishing and showing your stuff is important too, Shekhtman has some great ideas about that