I recently answered a question on Quora that is also relevant for this blog, so I am posting it here.
When speaking to someone who does not seem to be a fluent English speaker, should I “dumb down” my diction and vocabulary, or is that condescending and presumptuous?{#__w2_mw0UOKH_link}
My answer
It is very easy to make your speech easier to understand to the listener without ‘dumbing’ it down. Humans anyhow unconsciously accommodate their speech 1 to suit their listener. I consider myself an accent chameleon and do it all the time when talking in English. The exact degree of accommodation depends on the listener. Easy and polite ways to make your speech more accessible to your listener who’s not fluent in English are:
- Reduce the use of idiomatic but non-literal expressions and replace them with straight-forward ones: Instead of What's up?, say, How are you?
- Tone done your vocabulary: Trade nuance for simplicity. The guy doesn't knowdemonstrate? Use show.
- Rephrase: If the listener can't understand what you said, rephrase it into a completely different sentence structure. Remember that when people are new to a language, they tend to interpret every sentence rather atomically, piecing together meanings of words they know and fitting them into known constructs. Instead of repeating the sentence that wasn't understood, recast it into a different construct. Remember that as a fluent speaker, you can handle the language with much greater ease.
- If the listener can't understand a particular word at all, change your pronunciation to their pronunciation. Say you are in Japan and you just can't make them understand Apple, it might be better to repeat it as Appuru, the way a Japanese speaker would say the word. This happens most with people who've had little or no exposure to the native pronunciation of the language, and have learnt either from other speakers with the local accent or from books.
Condescension is often conveyed by the tone you use. If you continuously appear exasperated and behave as if the worst part of the world's troubles has been allotted to you, you will annoy your listener. Also, unnecessarily simplifying your speech although the listener can understand pretty comfortably is insulting. Take a second or two to gauge the level of the listener and start somewhere there. If they seem to be doing fine, raise the level. If they seem to be struggling, lower it down. For instance, I sound pretty natural and fluent when talking in French, so French people start with the easy mode but quickly switch to 'normal mode' when chatting with me and often say that they don't need to put in any effort while talking to me, which is to say they don't need to actively accommodate their speech for me.
Also, and this is most important for English speakers, always be appreciative of the fact that a foreigner is making an effort to speak your language, instead of walking around the world arrogantly expecting that it should be everyone's fundamental duty to know your language.