I just had a bit of an awkward interaction where I was trying to order an oat milk latte for a friend.
Never had to order oat milk before. No idea what native speakers call oat milk. But I could see the familiar milk alternative containers.
燕麦牛乳?
オートミルク?
Anyway… I just had to point and give it a whirl with それは日本語で何と言いですか。
I realised what I had said was a bit formal and over the top for the situation and am wondering if there is any more casual way of asking.
日本語でなんと言う?
日本語でなんですか
日本語でなに?
日本語でなんとか
3 comments
これは日本語で何ですって？
To keep it simple until you’re more comfortable, these two variants cover almost all situations perfectly.
Normal/polite (これは)日本語で何と言いますか？
Casual: (これは)日本語で何って言う(の)？
Note: 何って言う(の)？(What’s this called?) = the most “stripped down” you can take things and is pretty versatile.
It’s important to emphasize that you will almost never offend anyone using です／ます form of questions, but you may unwittingly offend someone with more casual forms of speech. Of course it’s important to learn all forms, but even among friends です／ます is perfectly fine.
The truly over the top polite forms for casual situations (sonkeigo/kenjogo) are hard to master and you won’t use them accidentally.