Table of Contents
It's all about communication
… and whether it's English or Mandarin it's not easy.
The global village needs …
some language in common. Right now, for all its quirks and colonialist (UK) and imperialist (US) baggage, English comes closest.
But, it’s much more important that there be a global language than which one it is.
Unless I had started in a mixed language grade school there is no way that I would ever be up to snuff in Mandarin. On the other hand, with smatterings of secondary and uni Latin, Spanish, Russian and even Arabic, I’m enough of a polyglot to be able to get by traveling when English is not on offer, especially in reading simple things.
Big whoop for me, huge cheer for a world that has a choice of, say, six global languages spanning major linguistic groups.
Idols of the Marketplace
Everyone is disadvantaged by language somehow even among their own first-language people once they leave the provinces, when the ascend or descend the social and economic ladders and when they relocate or change fields. It’s impossible to understand all the subtleties in continuously mutating patterns of spoken communities of usage. For writing style it’s easier to come closer for three reasons.
- It changes slowly
- Software to enforce grammatical norms is widely available and has been for years before AI escaped its zoo
- For scholars, the academic standard is, by and large, consistently of a stilted, formal style featuring the passive voice, an abundance of subordinate clauses, discursive asides and domain-specific vocabulary words with distinct meanings from general usage.
Picking up the skill of fitting in a different linguistic community depends entirely on internalizing.
When I was a baby lawyer at a big law firm, my work for the first two years consisted completely of proof reading and sitting silently in various meetings. One time, it took me two weeks to understand who was the Elsie always talked about on conference calls. Finally, it came up in conversation with Elaine, the partner in charge. To avoid failure on an assignment that depended on my knowing I had to ask and she said
Elsie? Elsie!! It's letter L letter C, Richard—letter of credit!
Before long, I was fluent in dealese:
- crossed eyes and whirled peas
- haircut
- senior sub
- over the wall
- bear hug
- opening the kimono (a sexist phrase for allowing a potential acquisition partner to conduct due diligence—I prefer alternating with “lifting the kilt” if we must be sexist)
When I recruited my own minions, as a senior associate, I preferred not making them creep through jargon minefields afraid to ask and hoping eventually to trip to the meaning. I hadn't the heart to inflict yet another a cruel hazing ritual on kids recently traumatized by the bar exam.
The seat of knowledge is limbic
Now, I understand the underlying heuristic. Fear of humiliation heightens perception. In fact, any state of emotional arousal will likely do. What we think of as book learning is overrated, at least when it comes to language skills. The exposure, feedback and gut reaction are key.
That applies not only to the current flavor of world language but to whatever joins or supplants it.
Moral
Get out of your comfort zone when trying to talk foreign. Listen to your gut and ask for help when you hear silence.
Mascot of the Day
