Language Barrier

I saw a tweet asking #LaurierGlobal how to handle a language barrier. Now I want to clarify I am not expert in language, or psychology, but I have experienced a language barrier first hand.

So first, living in Canada I never really encountered too much of a language barrier. I was fortunate and my mother enrolled me in immersion, so my whole life I learnt both French and English. Not only was my schooling a bonus, but I lived in a community where I could practice both languages, and thus develop my skills further. This was important because my first experience studying abroad was in Quebec. Now for most people staying within your country isn’t studying abroad, but if you’re Canadian you understand. Quebec has a different culture, not enough to create a culture shock, but if you don’t speak enough French it can be difficult. I saw that with my room mates who did not speak a high degree of French. I was lucky and was saved from facing any type of language barrier.

However, being bilingual did not save me from experiencing a language barrier within my own country. For those who study in the Waterloo region you know that the University of Waterloo admits a lot of international students. Which I will admit I love, I love cultural diversity, I love the change in faces. However, I happen to work in the plaza right beside UW, which means a lot of the people I interact with are international students attending UW. This is both a blessing and a curse.

Let me share this story with you. I happen to be a bartender in one of the plaza restaurants, and one day two people came in for lunch. When I went to go take their order the lady pointed at the steak, I smiled and asked her how she would like it cooked. She smiled back and repeated the words “Steak please”. Now this was when I realized she probably had a limited working knowledge of the English language and limited knowledge of Western style food and cooking. So I then had to ask how she wanted the steak cooked… which took about five minutes before I realized that body language and hand signs would not work. I finally decided to tell her I would get her steak for her and not ask any more questions.

This was mild, at least for my side of things. I am now on the reverse side of this story. Now instead of ordering steak I am trying to order plain white rice and vegetables. Simple right? Wrong.

Here is the thing, I do not live or study in a country with Latin based words, I am pretty good at guessing root words and thus understanding the context of the sentence if its a European language. However, I am living in China, which by the way uses a whole different phonetic alphabet and also uses characters and not the Latin based alphabet. Now most of us know this, but what most of us don’t realize is that means its actually really difficult to learn.

I was a firm believer that being bilingual would mean learning a third language would be easier, I will continue to firmly believe this statement if it is refined to say if the language has the same base (all Latin languages are easier to learn if you know one, or two). Thus Chinese is not easier to learn just because I am multi-lingual. This does not mean the language is impossible to learn, it just means its a new curve ball and there will be a language barrier.

Now, here is the thing, learning Mandarin is great and probably the most useful language to learn if you wish to work with Chinese, but here is the thing even if you learn Mandarin you may still encounter language barriers. Here is the reason why, each city, or region has their own local dialect. Some people, normally the older generation, only speak their local dialect.

Here are some tips on how I learnt to deal with the language barrier.

1. I accepted the fact I did not know what was going on (it does no good to stress out over it.)
2. I learnt to use body language, and copy other peoples body language
3. I learn hand signs. (China has a unique way to count numbers, this once again is specific to region.) They also have a hand sign for WC (Toilet)
4. I learn some basic words like: rice, eat, directions, where, how much
5. I continually immerse myself and practice what I know.

Now this means there are some awkward moments or some moments where I feel utterly defeated. However, I will never forgot those moments when I could finally communicate with the taxi driver, or my Chinese grandparents.

Actually, my living situation may be the best example of language barrier. There are 5 people that I live with, I make 6. 1 of them speaks English, making a total of 2 English speakers, 2 of them speak Mandarin, 5 of them speak the local dialect. As you can see, I am limited on who I can talk to. I often have to eat lunch with just my Grandparents, whom don’t speak English or Mandarin. I’ve learnt to survive by knowing when lunch and dinner are served and how to say yes and no, or simply shaking my head and waving my hands.

Although a language barrier can seem like a scary thing, its actually one of the most interesting, exciting, and rewarding parts of living abroad. I had a friend once tell me he could never live abroad because he would always feel like a tourist, and maybe that’s because of the language barrier, but eventually you stop feeling like a tourist and start having confidence in your ability to communicate, no matter how limited it may be.