Cultural letter #12 Communication
Dear friends,
I promised another cultural
letter. I had previously written a
cultural letter on miscommunication and never sent it...it seemed like as soon
as I was about to send it, something happened and I was afraid that someone
might think I was writing about them, so
I didn't send it lest I cause some ruffled feathers. :)
Since then, I've decided to
explore the idea of communication in at least two letters.
I'd like to delve into the
idea of words and language in this letter.
First of all, words are only
as strong in meaning as that language makes them. By that I mean, a
"chma" (spelled differently,
of course), is a "moth" to a Polish child because that's what his mom
taught him it meant. To you, it sounds
like you are almost spitting out something bad tasting. We learn what things mean, at least in our
native language, very naturally, as we are taught at home by our parents what
to say, how to say it, and what is good, bad, acceptable and unacceptable, good
and bad grammar, etc. We learn when to
use a slightly stronger word...we've laughed as our kids went through stages
when they used the strongest possible word....for example, she wasn't just
"tired, she was "exhausted", she wasn't just "upset",
she was "mad".
When a person learns another
language, a word that you don't know means nothing to you. "Bad words" mean nothing. For
someone like me...I never studied "bad or curse" words in Polish, and
thus, while I recognize God's name in vain, now, there was a time, when I
didn't even recognize that. Other "derogative" or "vulgar"
language goes right over my head. There
have been times when I did something another driver didn't like and he yelled
at me as he went around me. Of course,
the only thing I understood about that was that he was unhappy with me, as I
hadn't a clue as to the exact words he said.
I felt like retorting that he was wasting his breath, but he was long
gone before I got over the actual shock that he was so rude. :) (Overall, I'm a pretty nonaggressive driver,
so to have someone mad at me about my driving usually takes me back a little
bit.) If I had heard the words, I doubt I would have understood them, anyway.
Today a woman came over and
was exploding about her relatives. I had
another girl here (Violet) who speaks both Polish and English and when I told
her I understood only about 40% of what the other woman was saying, she said it
was probably better that way. :) I understood she was upset and with whom she
was upset and about what, but not the exact words...even she said she would say
things "delicately" for my kids' sake...:) I smiled and told her I doubted that they
would understand anyway...I figured if I didn't understand what she was talking
about, and I was trying to understand, my kids who were over at the table,
working on their schoolwork, and basically uninterested wouldn't
understand. (I was right.)
Yesterday I was at the dentist
and he loves practicing his English on me and he told me "s.....
happens." (in English) I was in
shock. I had never heard a doctor or
dentist in the states talk that way to me--especially as nice as this one
is...a quite cultured type person. Then,
I realized, that to him, words like that word, just don't have the effect on
him that they do on us. My husband and
another missionary, Ken, a few years back, were visiting another preacher and
this preacher asked them what does _____ mean?
Mike and Ken just swallowed hard and looked at other...and didn't really
want to talk about it. (I can't remember
the exact word or phrase--but I think Mike still does--, but it isn't something
one Christian would be discussing with another.) We realize that to these people, an English
"swear word" or "bad word" is about as meaningless as to
us, a Polish one is.
I am especially frustrated
when I've heard children come into my house who don't speak English and start
using "Oh God" as an expression.
I know that they've heard it on tv, because they don't even speak English,
and yet use the English version of taking God's name in vain. (It's actually been quite a while since I've
heard that one, since I clamped down on that one pretty fast.) When I realized what I was hearing when I was
hearing kids in our house using God's name in vain in Polish...I came down on
that, too, but this is so ingrained in them, that it seems to be taking
forever. Now, maybe you caught my
expression, "when I realized what I was hearing." When you hear something in a language that
isn't your native tongue, esp. in the process of learning it, it often takes a while for things to filter
down from the "hearing" state to the "comprehension"
state. So, while I may "hear"
something, that doesn't always translate into a complete comprehension of what
I heard--sometimes it takes a few seconds, sometimes a minute later I realize
what all I heard, and sometimes I still don't comprehend it all! :)
There is the idea of
"denotated" meaning and "connotated" meaning. Denotated meaning is the dictionary
definition of a word; "connotation" means more of what it means in
that context, or how it is commonly used.
Let me explain. A Polish person
who is strictly going by denotation may put together a sentence like this, "The
exploitation of the car was too expensive." Since the dictionary definition of exploit
has to do with usage, and they DO use exploit in this sense in Polish, it would
only be logical that they would do this. HOWEVER, in English, we
"exploit" people, but not cars or machines. The first time I heard the
"exploitation" of a car over here wasn't all that long ago and I
laughed at the idea of exploiting a car...but it doesn't have a negative
connotation over here at all...it simply means "usage". To
"exploit" in English has to do with "using people" and I've
always heard it in a very negative sense--usually factory workers, foreigners
or women. To "exploit" in Polish simply means to use and from what
I've seen, often refers to cost of using it, including gas mileage, kilowatts,
etc.
We can, in our efforts to
learn Polish, put together sentences that end up being either quite funny or
else not quite what we intended. For
example, we can say in English "I am cold." But, if I say in Polish "I am
cold", literally translated, it has a meaning other than "the
temperature is too low for me to be comfortable." So, for me to mean that, I need to say,
literally translated, "It is cold to me." So, there can be some embarrassing moments,
esp. if no one tells you that you are saying things wrong. Obviously textbooks don't cover all the
bases--we need people close by to let us know, gently, when we've goofed (and
hopefully in private, if it is embarrassing.).
In these cases, I'm not even
talking about a slip of a letter or a mess up of the grammar...I'm talking
about, "We don't say it that way."
I'm sure it is this way in every language.
That's all for now. I'm tired
and I've think you're probably tired of reading by now.
Goodnight and 'bye for now,
Becky in