How to Communicate in Any Language while Speaking English

When it comes to communicating in a foreign country, culture and tongue – Mandi may whole heartedly disagree with me on my approach but regardless of what she says and how she feels about it, I am right on this one –there is much more to it than sending vibrations up through our body and manipulating these vibrations with our larynx, tongue, and vocal cords.
First off, let’s get it straight, gesticulating is key with any of the following extremely helpful tips, oh and always remember to smile-you don’t want to come across as being just another, “North American Scum”(thanks LCD sound system). Once you get the hand motions down you can tone down your decibel level and begin to break down the English language to such a degree that it is easy to digest. Omit all unnecessary intransitive verbs, irregular verbs, adjectives, proper verb conjugations, adverbs, and definitely leave out all of the articles; they just get in the way. Oh, and remember to consistently stick with the present tense. Tenses always seem to throw people off.

“Tomato, English, Korean what?” I projected my voice loudly while looking at a produce man who was assembling a heap of weird looking vegetables. He responded to me with an awkward look on his face.

“TTTTOOOMMAAATTTOO,” I said while waving the waxy, overly ripened red tomato in the air. Once again he responded to me with an awkward look that was then followed by a lengthy lecture in Korean about only god and the produce man knows what.

“TOMATO, English, Korean what?” I said again.

He looked at me and said, “Tomatooo.”

I responded with, “Anio, anio!” (Korean for NO, NO)

Pointing at the tomato  this time I said, “English tomato. Korean what?” I finished this try off by shrugging my shoulders and showing the palm of my one empty hand.

Produce man didn’t respond at all as if to say, “You idiot, I just told you,” and then he slowly let out a sigh that sounded a bit of defeat- if defeat has a sound that is- and in a very clear manner he enunciated the word, “Tomatooo”.

I must have looked like I felt, frustrated, because he said it again and this time even more clearly than the first time, “Tomatooo”.

We went back and forth a few more times until we came to a realization that we both must have been retarded and had probably been beaten as kids one too many times on the head. Simultaneously we must have reached the same conclusion because at the same time we shrugged our shoulders and he went back to packing weird Asian vegetables and I walked away utterly bewildered and totally confused in search of something I could recognize.

Communicating is all about the attitude, the tone, the vocal projection and well let’s be honest the desperation with which you beg for directions. Another aspect of communication we tend to forget is “luck”, the luck that the person you are desperately trying to pry life saving information from is a fan of Baywatch reruns or the current global favorite, CSI.
From a linguistic standpoint, while attempting to communicate with Korean speakers, I tend to revert to some sort of motherese complete with big smiles, making vroom-vroom sounds for the bus, exaggerated intonations and even slowing of the tempo.

On the other hand, a neurolinguist who would listen in on my desperate plea for directions might diagnose me on the spot with some severe language disorder and possibly request that I see a speech therapist.
The day after the tomato incident I asked the director of my school what the Korean word was for that red, tasty, vine fruit known to us English speakers as tomato.

She smiled and explained that this one would be easy for me. And then she said it:
TOMATO

-Josh Morris