What to say when words fail you part 3

Getting a moment to think

A lot of people, answering a question in their native language, will get about five words into the answer before they decide what the answer actually is. It's called "putting the mouth in gear while the brain is still in neutral". People who have been to university, as well as people speaking in a foreign language, usually tend to wait until they have thought of their answer before they start to speak. If the speaker is shy or feeling anxious, they will then take an extra second to double-check their words before voicing them. Shy, clever, educated people speaking in a foreign language may need several seconds of processing time before answering a question even as simple as: "Do people in your country like dogs?" A silent period before answering may make your conversational partner think that you are stupid, ignorant of the language, drunk, falling asleep or in some kind of hypnotic trance. It may be a good idea to make some noise while revving up your brain.

Here are some suggestions for making the right kinds of noise:

1) Pretend you didn't hear the question.
"Did you say dogs or frogs?"

2) Repeat the question in a thoughtful voice:
"Do people in my country like dogs?"

3) Say "Mmm....."

4) Say: "That's a VERY interesting question! Let me think....."

5) Say: "Well, I'm not ENTIRELY sure, but I would say....."

6) Ask for clarification of the question.
"Do you mean that they like dogs in the sense of keeping them as pets?"

7) Turn the question back onto the questioner.
"Mmm....I'm not really sure.....how popular are they in YOUR country?"

8) Answer "No!" in a confident tone of voice.
The chances are that the questioner wasn't expecting that (people tend to ask questions expecting the answer yes). They will then ask "WHY don't people in your country like dogs?" Now you may have to.....

9) Invent an outrageous lie.
"Dogs were banned in my country about twenty years ago. We keep ferrets or very large hamsters as house pets instead." This sounds so unlikely that you know the questioner will ask you more about it. This is useful for controlling a question-and-answer session in an examination.

10)Tell a personal or family story.
"My grandfather was a famous dog breeder. He once sold a cocker spaniel to Stalin's aunt." It doesn't matter if it is only slightly relevant to the question, if the story is interesting you can get a couple of minutes of conversation out of it - again useful in examinations.

Failing that:

11) Admit your ignorance and move on.
"I have absolutely no idea I'm afraid. Have you another question you could ask me instead?"

This works best if the questioner doesn't know you:

12) State an opinion.
"Dogs? I hate dogs! They carry fleas and people spend money on them that they could spend feeding the homeless!" You don't really have to think this, just state something the other person is likely to disagree with and, again, you control the conversation for the next couple of minutes.

If absolutely desperate, you can always try:

13) The wildly unexpected conversation change.
"I don't know much about dogs. Incidentally, did you know that my country is world famous for producing a kind of cheese made from mouse's milk? Pavarotti wouldn't perform anywhere without a crate of it in his dressing room."

Next article: more examination tips.

What to say when words fail you part 2

Understanding the Question


I used to talk to a lady from China who, despite many years of instruction couldn't speak English fluently. No matter how slowly and carefully I spoke, no matter how simple the question, two out of every three of my questions were met with silence. I then had to work through a list of possibilities: Can you hear me? Is there noise on the line? Do you want me to rephrase the question?

After a couple of conversations she had a very good idea. She read out to me a piece of English she had prepared earlier and it was excellent. Clearly she understood English very well, at least when it was written down. I recommended extra listening practice.

A few conversations later and she got braver. She admitted that when she didn't understand a question, she had no idea what to do about it. I suggested she LingQ and learn the following phrases:

“This Skype connection's terrible!”
“Can you repeat that please?”
“I'm sorry, I have trouble understanding your accent!”
“Could you say that more slowly please?”
“Could you please rephrase the question?”
“I don't know this word:....”
“What do you mean by the phrase......?”
“Let me check that I have understood you. Are you asking me.....?”

I said that, even in an English examination, there should be no penalty for asking to have the question repeated, and if the examiner has an unfamilar accent you may need them to slow down and maybe even use different words. I also thought that, even if you DID understand the question, you could ask to have it repeated to give you a few seconds extra thinking time.

“What if I need more thinking time?” she asked.

Well, I'll save that question for next time. For homework, please practise the phrase “This Skype connection's terrible!”

What to say when words fail you

Several students of English have said to me lately: “I'm not very good at English because I can't speak fluently”. In vain I protest that their English is excellent. They don't believe me. “Oh, I can talk about my research into creating superintelligent woodlice,” they answer modestly, “But ask me about how to eliminate world poverty and I can think of nothing to say!” Well, I'm hardly suprised. The Pope, Barrack Obama and Bob Geldoff between them couldn't solve that one. The difference between them and you is, they could talk fluently, even passionately, on the subject despite having no really clever ideas.

Natives have strategies for continuing to talk when words fail them. Starting from the age of two, when a child points to an object and calls it a “bah-bah!”, rising through teenage years of using a restricted set of idiomatic vocabulary (innit, yeah?), to a career as a politician or a TV rent-a-gob. We learn how to keep our mouths working until ours brains catch up.

The main problem for intelligent people is that they tend to go to university where they are taught not to make a statement unless they can back it up with evidence. Collecting data, sifting out useful information and reasoning your way to a conclusion takes time. In England, when someone says “Lovely weather!” to you, by the time you have looked at the sky, estimated the air temperature, wind speed and the possibility of rain later, not only has your conversational partner walked away but the weather will have changed too. Sometimes all that is expected of you is to open your mouth and make some noise.

This problem gets worse when intelligent people decide to learn a second language. Teachers tell you how to communicate information correctly. To a smart person that means even more processing, even slower responses. To a listener this sounds like you haven't understood the question, or you are too stupid to answer.

Recently I asked someone whether there were a lot of trees in his country. It was a stupid question, I was just checking that he was still on the line and hadn't fallen asleep over his laptop. The answer was a long, puzzled silence. “Did you hear the question?” I asked finally. “I heard it and I understood it,” he admitted, bashfully, “but I'm afraid I don't know the answer!” Clearly he is an extremely intelligent person, because if he wasn't he would have said “Oh, yes!” 'Yes' is a nice, bright, shiny word, it trips off the tongue and makes people happy. Who cares if it is the right answer? It takes a lot of intelligence to make you afraid of making an ill-judged remark about forests.

I intend to write a series of pieces, aimed at the smart but tongue-tied student, explaining what you can say when you can't think what to say. My suggestions will not make you sound cleverer: you already know how to speak like an intelligent person. They will hopefully, however, make you sound more confident and comfortable in a conversation in English, which will make the process of speaking intelligently a less stressful experience. Who knows, they might even come in useful when you speak in your own language!

How to be offensive: a guide for the polite

A lovely Japanese lady, who must rank among politest people on the planet, has asked me to scrutinise her forums posts and let her know if any of them are offensive. Now, I doubt that she has ever written or said anything deliberately offensive in her life, certainly not to strangers on the internet. I said as much to her (tact is not my strong point).

She said of course not, not intentionally. But how can she tell if, writing in a foreign language, she unintentionally makes an offensive remark? How can she tell what is considered unacceptable in Britain, in North America, indeed to anyone, in any part of the world? Nothing that I have said about the general reasonableness of people or the unimportance of offending people who don't know where you live has satisfied her. She wants a clear action plan for avoiding doing something she has never done and would never dream of doing.

This is tricky. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, it is a three-teapot problem. I have thought very hard over a lot of tea and come up with this idea: to teach her how to be deliberately offensive, so that she can recognise when she is doing it and so satisfy herself that she is not doing it.

I'm not an expert on offensive behaviour myself (it's not a compulsory subject in British schools), so I can only offer the following simple suggestions.

Consistently spell the person's name wrong.

If you quote their words, get them wrong. Make sure you give the impression that you did not read their words carefully.

If you like what they write, steal it. Put their comments on your web site without permission. Retell their best jokes and pretend you thought them up.

Tell them that they are ignorant of some common knowledge, like rules of good behaviour, grammar or punctuation. Telling them that they don't understand the history of their own country is a good move.

Question their mental state, also that of their political and religious leaders.

Make public any personal information you may have about them, in an unflattering way.

Make condescending remarks about their age, sex, race and religion. If possible, get at least one of these wrong. Say things like "I don't expect a kid like you to understand this, but...." to someone who a 27 year-old, call a Canadian an American, etc.

Deliberately misunderstand at least one point that they make every time you respond to them.

Either misspell your post to them (to show that you couldn't be bothered to check your words before posting them) or correct their spelling (to imply that they are too lazy to check their words before posting them). Be sure to correct their spelling if they are writing in their native language.

Express all your opinions as facts and say that anyone who disputes them is an idiot/bigot/heathen. Naturally, you should at the same time dispute every opinion expressed by your opponent.

Throw in very extremely unecessarily EMPHATIC language, such as &*$%ing OBSCENTITIES, CAPITALS and lots of EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!! This makes you look like an UNREASONABLE and VERY ANGRY person!

you could also try typing everything in lower case very long sentences with no punctuation at all which makes you look very mad and also unreasonable but not very angry.


I shall be setting all my politest and most charming students the task of writing me an offensive post. There may be a prize for the best entry. Watch this space.....

Learning Japanese with LingQ: Beginner level

I started learning Japanese with LingQ this year, mainly to see if it could be done. It's supposed to be awfully hard, what with all those Chinese characters. I just couldn't believe that the "relax and have fun!" methodology of LingQ was sufficiently rigourous to enable you to learn Japanese with no initial knowledge.

The first few weeks were a bit baffling. I couldn't read a word of it. I had to save words that looked like "squiggle" to me. In the definition box I had to write how to pronounce it as well as what it meant. Which meant that, when reviewing the words I was learning, I largely ignored the "word" box and just read the "meaning" box. I kept telling myself I should sit down and learn the hiragana and katakana writing systems, but in the end I never got round to it.

Meanwhile I was listening to audio clips which, being spoken at more-or-less normal speaking speed, sounded like "blurblurblurblurblur" to me. I couldn't see what I was supposed to get out of the exercise.

I was making progress though. I could tell by my LingQ activity score. I gained points for every word I saved, along with its meaning, even though the word was just an unreadable squiggle to me. I kept reviewing the "squiggles", and found that every time, I remembered a couple of them. I put their status up every time I recognised them, and my activity score kept climbing.

Six months later, I can read most Japanese words in hiragana. I can read a few of the simpler kanji too, though I can't always remember how to say them. I know a few hundred words, can recognise them when spoken (it doesn't sound like "blurblurblurblur" anymore) and some of them I can even spell. In hiragana.

In fact, after six months of what seems like just messing about, I can understand Japanese as well as I could understand Russian when I joined LingQ. Without attempting to learn the writing system. Without learning how to conjugate the verbs. Without studying flashcards. I spent two years with Russian trying to understand how the language "worked", and now it turns out, you don't need to!

LingQ: spelled wrong on purpose.

Learning German with LingQ: Advanced level

My German's already pretty good. I've been working on it for years. I can usually understand what natives are saying to me and each other, only needing to ask them to explain the odd phrase. I speak with an English accent and may get the word order wrong, but as I'm not a diplomat, teacher or spy I can live with that.

So I'm not going to take German lessons. My pride wouldn't stand it. Instead I listen to German podcasts, read stories in German, follow German blogs. Now and then I take a few web articles or a few chapters of a book and create my own LingQ articles from them. I skim through them using an on-line dictionary. LingQ tells me which words are new (in this case it is words which are new to me on LingQ, the chances are I have met them elsewhere). Some words and phrases I decide to learn, because they really are new, or I have only a rough idea of their meaning, or it's a good phrase that I want to remember (Ein Ring, sie zu knechten! Ahem.) All the other words I mark as known, so my LingQ Known words score goes up pretty rapidly, with little effort from me.

Now and then I look through my list of created LingQs. I don't put much effort into learning new words. On the contrary, I usually keep the word "on the back burner" until I have met it two ot three times, in different situations. By then it will usually have worked its way into my memory all by itself, and I just have to mark it as known.

When I feel like it, I spend 1000 points on a chat with a German tutor. We talk about anything we feel like, books we're read, films we like. Sometimes we talk in German about another language we are both studying, say French. And I get a conversation report at the end, which I may (or may not, I'm pretty lazy) study to learn some new words and phrases.

You really can't call it work. It's just bookkeeping, keeping track of words I have learned, and the words that are, without me trying, working their way into my brain. It also means hanging out with some very nice German-speaking people.

And the results? A year ago I could only understand spoken German pieces if they were read clearly and carefully. Now I can listen to the radio, watch TV, listen to podcasts on history and science, even get the jokes on comedy podcasts. And I now speak, still with an English accent and the odd bit of dodgy word order, on a much wider range of subjects. It's like having taken a year's university course without actually having the bother of attending any lessons or doing any homework.

LingQ helps bad language users to speak it better.

LingQ: setting goals, meeting targets

When I first joined LingQ my goal was simple but vague: I just wanted to be able to speak Russian. I wasn't sure if I could, so setting that goal was a big deal for me. I wasn't sure whether I was smart enough, how long it would take, how much it would cost, how hard it would be, whether my somewhat chaotic lifestyle could accommodate a long-term learning plan.

A year later, I know better.

Sure I'm smart enough! If you can switch on a computer then you have the brains to learn a language. My little boy can do both and he's still in nappies.

It needn't cost anything. LingQ is about people helping each other to learn. You don't even have to buy Steve Kaufmann's book.

It takes (give or take) 1 000 hours to become fluent in a language.

It's actually pretty easy, unless you try and make it hard. You just listen to stuff and read stuff and then you realise you have learned some new words.

As for my freeform lifestyle, I have a computer in my living room, an MP3 player in my pocket and an eBook reader in my handbag. Whenever I have a spare 10 minutes when my ears, eyeballs or fingers aren't being used for something else, I can do some reading or some listening or some vocabulary reviewing. Although I have very little quality time to spare, I have two or three hours a day of spare odd minutes, on the bus, at the school gate, eating breakfast or having a bath. It doesn't matter whether you do more listening than reading, or more reading than reviewing vocabulary. It all goes into your brain, and your brain joins it all together while you are thinking about something quite different. (I've started dreaming in Kanji, now that's weird!)

If you cast your eyeballs to the column on the right you will see that I'm now working on 5 languages at once. My goal is to become proficient enough at each that I can read a newspaper, listen to a radio show, watch a TV documentary. I figure that's about 40 000 known words and 1 000 hours study per language, and as you can see I'm getting there. It might take a couple of years, it might take a bit longer (I quite fancy Arabic and Spanish too). But I know I can do it, I can afford to do it, and it's fun. I also know a lot of people who have done it before me.

LingQ: because we can't ALL be crazy!

Why I use LingQ to learn languages

Steve suggests we create some videos for LingQ's YouTube group LingQ Plaza http://www.youtube.com/group/lingqplaza. I have never done a video before, so I'll write some words here and use the best ones for a script.

I joined LingQ in July 2008. I had been trying to learn Russian and was getting frustrated. I had spent a lot of time reading books, but none of it helped me to actually understand a piece of Russian! I found I was spending more and more time trawling the internet, looking for sites which could help me.

But I'm a tricky customer to please. I don't want to pay any money, for anything. I want well-thought out guidance from people who really understand about language learning. I don't want to be bored, at all, ever. So I don't like sites which tell me to read dull news articles or the classics. I don't do poetry. I do vampire stories, rock music (DDT rule!) and articles about the paranormal. I don't like sites that try to sell me sex in any form (I really can't use any more Russian mail-order brides) and I don't want to be encouraged to download illegal files.

I happened upon LingQ. It was exactly what I was looking for, audio files with transcripts, a lot of them, with on-line dictionaries so you can look up the words you don't understand and save them in your own on-line vocabulary list. I also really liked the fact that the system kept track of how many words you had learned and how many words you knew, so for the first time I had some indicator of my progress. Best of all, I liked that I could use my own material (Dracula!) to create my own LingQ lessons.

I like the people too. I was impressed right from the start that a lot of LingQ members are linguists. These are people who seriously love language learning, and have put a lot of thought into how best to do it. I have learned more about the learning process from hanging out in the forum than I ever learned in a class.

I hate spending money. But I do have a paying account on LingQ now, it's worth it because I get feedback on my progess from a lot of friendly and helpful tutors. It's a lot of fun. And I haven't been bored, not ever. And I haven't read any poetry either.

LingQ: because it keeps you off the streets and out in the big wide world.