[SpamCop-Social] Re: Tenn. judge to moms: Learn English or lose kids

[Frog Prince]

"Don Wannit"

| > Chinese if tonal (I'm dead in that language despite a strong effort).
To my
| > experience the Japanese are very please that one would make the effort.
The
| > only draw back we encountered was that they did not want to chance
| > embarrassing us so they would not make corrections in usage or
| > pronunciation.

| Also matches my experience living in Tokyo.  It's very important in
| Japanese culture to avoid causing embarrassment to others.  Correcting
| another person's grammar is considered rude, and it's *really* hard for
| many Japanese to overcome that deeply instilled reluctance to be
| rude.  Younger Japanese seem to be better able to overcome that
| reluctance :-)
|
| Even worse for the purposes of my improving Japanese skills, most
| people under 50 I met all wanted to practice their English with me.

My solution was a stop watch like the one used for chess games for 10 min.
with a 10 min free zone. Basically person on has 10 min followed with a free
zone person 2 has 10 min followed by free zone.  Nothing hard and fast but
gave a guide line for which language was the in mode.

I also had a name tag and small table top sign board modified with the
message (paraphrases) 'this person would appreciate practicing Japanese and
will also practice English'.  Don't know how culturally correct but it
worked.  As your experience I had more young than old and most of them were
teens.