Social Life
The Hardest Part of Learning Another Language
Knowing a language is not the same as being able to effectively communicate with it. A knowledge of social rules, routines, and norms is essential too.
Key points:
* Knowing a language and being able to effectively communicate with it are different things.
* Understanding social rules, routines, and norms is crucial.
* Familiarity with slang, euphemisms, and idioms is also important.
This has been a record year for Americans taking vacations and making trips abroad. But as many travelers learn, communicating with people in other parts of the world can be difficult.
Dusting off a language you studied in high school can certainly be useful in many situations, but even a well-intentioned tourist might annoy or offend native speakers of the language—perhaps without even realizing it.
Aspiring language learners need to acquire vocabulary and grammar of another tongue, but knowing how to employ it in socially appropriate ways is another matter entirely. It turns out that knowing how to say something can be just as important as knowing what to say.
Language and Culture
Each culture has its own set of social rules and routines, which vary by country and sometimes even by region. These include politeness routines and the degree of formality to use when interacting with others.
Some languages have formality baked right into their lexicons and grammar. Others may lack this, but have regional variants like y’all or yinz.
Many guidebooks and some language instructors emphasize acquiring formal constructions used in the target language since coming across as overly polite is less likely to offend than being too familiar. However, this also means that a non-native speaker runs the risk of sounding like an oddly formal caveman.
These communicative differences aren’t solely linguistic. Consider making eye contact with or greeting people you encounter on the street. In some places, doing so is considered a violation of social norms and is frowned upon. But in another place, failing to make eye contact might mark you as rude or unfriendly.
In addition, a fluent speaker must have some knowledge of the language’s slang, euphemisms, and idioms. The danger here is that the appropriateness of such expressions varies greatly depending on the social setting.
Striking the Right Tone
To illustrate this, let’s flip the script and consider the problems faced by someone who is learning English. The language has a remarkably diverse set of euphemisms for the concept of having died, such as “kicked the bucket,” “bought the farm,” and so on. All of these would be wildly inappropriate to use when expressing one’s sorrow to a grieving family member at a memorial service.
Or how about congratulating a coworker who is expecting? To observe that they are “knocked up” or “preggers” would be ill-advised—unless the speaker knows the coworker well and is straining for humorous effect. On the other hand, remarking that someone is “in a family way” would be too formal.
Let’s consider another possibility. How would you tell someone that a mutual acquaintance had way too much to drink the night before? Again, English has a vast array of terms for describing this. Would you say that they were “three sheets to the wind,” “hammered,” or “driving the porcelain bus”? The phrase you choose would depend on factors like your relationship with the inebriated person, the individual you are addressing, and why you are divulging that information.
The native speaker of a language understands the connotations of these terms and will probably choose an expression appropriate to the context. A non-native speaker may attempt this and fail because social rules and norms vary so much from culture to culture.
Using idioms correctly can also be challenging. These frozen expressions can’t be altered, even just a little, without changing their meaning.
I hope that all of you break a leg—just one—in your adventures with other languages.
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/small-talk-and-big-questions/202407/the-hardest-part-of-learning-another-language