Language Barrier
July 25th, 2008 by Larry D. Burton
My step mother is from Guatemala. She has a fantastic command of the
English language along with French, Italian and German. Regardless of the
fact that she speaks English fluently it is still her second language and
there are occasional misunderstandings that sometimes have comical results
and at others not so funny results. I have several co-workers from India
who grew up speaking Hindi. Their English is all good but still there are
miscommunications between us sometimes.
I have come to the conclusion that no matter how well one speaks a second
language there are some little subtleties that just don’t translate. Unless
one has lived for an extended period of time in a culture there are things
one just can not understand. Colloquialisms seem to be the heart of the
matter in fully understanding each other. Even people I have worked with
who came from other parts of the US have had trouble understanding me at
times and I them due to little things like how one phrases informal speech.
