Japanese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Say you are in public and see some other people's kids misbehaving. What is the appropriate way to address them? (both sexes)
Something on the line of: "Hey kid, don't do ..."
It might be specific to the degree of misbehavior so let's give some kind of scale:
It's indeed hard to say as there are many ways and it depends on the situation. That said, こら(or コラ） can be used in most situations. All you need to do is regulate how short and loud you say it, depending on severity.
When you say こら loud and short, it unmistakably signals you are scolding the other person. It can be used as a joke, but if you say it to young children they will almost always interpret it as being scolded. It can be used for any severity IMO, and you can basically escalate on a continuous scale. Though if the situation is urgent one might want to shout instructions instead (降りろ・降りなさい、離れろ・離れなさい、やめろ・やめなさい etc)
As was mentioned in the comments above, this kind of language is very sensitive to the situation and could be very opinion based. However, there are some basic phrases that are used pretty universally that could help you as a starting-off point to find more phrases.
