I am always grateful for our Interculturalist meetings from the The Interchange Institute. I enjoy it so much, and I always leave after this hour with lots of new insights. Today, the topic with Renata Urban was extraordinary for me because we spoke about „Listening and Speaking Agility Across Cultures.“
And here we are, my daily life!
A topic besides pure language skills, it has a lot to do with emotions and cultural misunderstandings – an issue I mention in my Expat preparation too.
Sorry, dear English-native-speaker – no offense, but there may be slight arrogance in speaking English. It is the world’s (business) language, and everybody has to express it „perfectly .“We communicate in English, train in English, and negotiate in English.
Well, I am trying my best, but I am German and have an accent. Yes, maybe my spoken word is not always 100% correct. I remember a lot of English classes where the teacher tried to do their best to make a native speaker out of me and eliminate my accent. Sorry, but no illusions – I can’t; this is by nature.
Communication in each way is full of pitfalls
And this leads to the next point: I am not a native speaker and will never understand all idioms and humor. Humor in cross-cultural communication is generally a complicated topic. One example, I go weekly to a physical therapist, a kind and funny person. He likes joking, but I never have an idea what he is saying, and he can see it on my face. Funny – for him.
This leads to the pronunciation in general; if you are too fast and speaking next to idioms in a strong dialect (I’m living in the South of the US); I am sometimes out!
An endless topic, and we didn’t start speaking about doing presentations, different meanings of words, and hell, the writing skills in other languages. How does it sound; Communication in each way is full of pitfalls.
But stop, NO, because I am good! I am just speaking in another language; I am learning every day and improving daily. But I will never stop sometimes struggling because it is not my native language and will never be.
Dear native speaker, it doesn’t matter in which language or country; how can we solve this topic?
First, if you speak to a foreigner, please be nice; without judging.
Speak slowly, don’t use slang, and repeat the sentence differently. Embrace the factor that the other person is trying their best to speak with you in your language. Mistakes are all right, and this is an essential point of Intercultural competence or being emphatic.
And worth sharing, Renate gave me a great counter-response: „You have no idea how intelligent I sound in my language.“
Thanks, Renate, for this great conversation today.
What do you think about this topic? Do you know these feelings, or are you always confident enough?
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