Part 1 of Cross-cultural communication conundrums ("It's a slam dunk!")
A US-based colleague of mine whom I'd had the recent pleasure to meet, spoke to my immediate team about working effectively across various cultures. The basketball expression "it's a slam dunk!" was, in his experience, as bewildering to his overseas colleagues as what we might consider to be less esoteric expressions, like "no kidding".
This prompted me to consider what lessons I'd learned in my position as a thrice ex-patriated person with a working knowledge of Japanese and French (and now challenged with Austrian German).
In Ireland, it took me a surprisingly long time to truly understand Hiberno-English. Never mind the phonetic shifts (aka "accent"); even transcribed, common interjections and vocabulary can quickly mystify the non-initiated.
Take this example sentence which artificially conflates a lot of native (Dublin centric) expressions:
"Oh be the hokie: my laptop was banjaxed. I felt so knackered after trying to fix it that when I met yer wan on the footpath by Mssrs., I barely said how'ya."
I'll post a translation if there's enough interest from the non-Dub readers!
In any case, my example serves the purpose of reminding us that just because everyone speaks a flavour of English, 100% communication is far from a "sure thing" (see, another expression that may baffle a non-native speaker).
I'm a non-Dub reader, so pls translate :-)
ReplyDeleteI think I got the gist, but a translation would help me see how close I am. BTW, I ran into similar issues in Hong Kong earlier this year. I hadn't realized how many American idioms I use until I had to explain a few to my confused local team members. I think I was insulated from the same realization when I was in Tokyo in 1994. For one, American culture was very popular at that time in Japan, and most of the English speakers I worked with were well-versed in American expressions.
ReplyDeleteSeda, I'll post my interpretation of that fictitious sentence in a future post; I hope your patience matches your curiosity. :)
ReplyDeleteMick, I'd imagine UK idioms would have more traction in HK: as for Japan, of course much of American English would have inundated the financial and popular culture media particularly after WWII. Between Meiji and the 1940s, it's my impression that most Western imported terms were European (Dutch, German and French) in origin.
This reminds me of a popular fitness program on radio ages ago, Ilse Buck (sp?) People were joking about her giving instructions how to knot arms and lergs and keeping the secret how to untangle to the next morning.
ReplyDeleteSo we will patiently wait for your authentic interpretation :-)
Klaus, I see she was from Linz: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilse_Buck and that her promotion of isometrics did indeed not mandate any guidance on how to return to a neutral body position.
ReplyDeleteI'll create the follow-on post shortly, but still haven't decided when I'll publish it. :)