ESL child wants to know the name of an object in English, what's the best question to use here?
Dear all, I am teaching my children (we are Russian) to use the following questions whenever they want to learn the English name of this or that object:
What's the English for...?
What do you call ... in English?
BUT recently I received the information that those two questions are too formal and kids are expected to say something like
How IT"S called in English?
or even
How this is in English?
I was told that this information comes from a native speaker who lives in Great Britain.
The question is - still what's the best way to ask about English names of things? It has to be both understandable and grammatially correct, I don't want my children to learn any "more or less correct" ways of saying that, I just want them to say it the way an educated native child would say it.
Dear all, that would be great if you also specify where you come from when you share your ideas, thank you!
Search from various English teachers...
Corrections · 2
1
In my opinion:
(1) What's the English for...? is fine. You can also leave out the article: What's English for. . . ?
(2) What do you call ... in English?
(3) "How IT'S called in English?" sounds terrible to me. A somewhat similar correct question would be, "What is this called in English?" "what" is better than "how"; and you can't use "it" if you're showing the object to the child for the very first time. The sentence also requires an inversion of the subject and verb: "is this", NOT "this is". The inversion is why you can never correctly say "How IT'S called . . ."
(4) "How this is in English?" is also terrible. You could say, "What is this in English?", as you show the object to the child for the first time.
All of my above-suggestion are proper ways to ask the question. Here are a few more:
"How do you say . . . in English?"
"How does one say . . . in English?" (somewhat formal)
"What is (What's) the English word for . . . . ?"
"What is the English name for this?", as you show an object to the child.
I'm writing this from the USA.
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