Little Kids and Old People

Little kids and old people are the best for language practice. They are not self-conscious, so they are easy to talk to. When they want to communicate, they act things out, use gestures, onomatopoeia----anything to get an idea across. I don’t laugh at their bad pronunciation and they don’t ridicule my poor grammar. They use their limited English, I use my busted Japanese and it’s all good.

Example one: I’m walking down the hallway toward the stairs. Yuna, a fifth-grader, stops me and points out that my ears, like hers, aren’t pierced. She wants to get them pierced. Then she tells me that I can get pretty clip-on earrings at Daiso (a 100-yen store chain similar to the dollar store). Then, to ensure that I knew what store she was talking about, she sang the Daiso jingle. Genius. Cracked me up.  

January 1, 2020