Language Barriers When Dating Across Cultures
As ClickinLove is predominantly a dating site dedicated to intercultural dating, I thought I would touch on the subject of language problems couples may face when they are in an intercultural relationship. Besides for the inevitable misunderstanding which can arise due to both people having a different set of reference customs, there are also issues which occur when one or other misconstrues the meaning and nuances of idiomatic expressions and language peculiarities.
For instance, sarcasm, which may be a common conversational element in one culture, could prove hard to understand for someone from another culture. Often an incomplete grasp of the language can make understanding sarcasm a little tricky and the meaning can go very awry. Yet the person being sarcastic may not realise that their comment was misunderstood and the person who misunderstood may probably not even know that they made a mistake in their understanding of what was said and meant. Consequently, communication between both people has suffered, yet neither may actually realise this.
That is why it is especially important in intercultural dating to avoid relying too heavily on cultural traits when talking, to try and avoid idiomatic expressions, colloquialisms and other such sentence constructs which can cause ambiguity. The danger is that, unlike normal communication problems where issues can be identified and eventually resolved, with cross-cultural language issues, both people may not actually realise that the other person has misunderstood them. Eventually, somewhere down the line, these issues will surface and the underlying reason for them will be hard to determine; by that stage it may be too late to backtrack and resolve the issues.
August 3rd, 2008 at 7:16 am
It’s good to avoid as much colloquialisms as possible, especially slang, whose words can have another meaning entirely in other languages. Most importantly, try to avoid such talk over the phone, where the person you are talking to cannot see your facial expressions, and therefore may not know if the conversation is going good or not.