An expatriate learning with breaking the language barriers
I am a professional expatriate who has traveled the world and lived in 5 countries through his job. A while ago, I have accepted an assignment to move to South America, specifically to São Paulo in Brazil. I would like to share with you, my experience and struggles with learning the language and breaking the cultural barriers.
I was feeling quite ill from a severe cold, so I walked into a random pharmacy to get myself a medicine or a remedy. I was only at that time one month living in São Paulo as an expatriate, and driven by my extroverted personality, I was eager to expand my network and build new relationships. However, whenever I started with “Hi, my name is Laurent, pleased to meet you” — I was predominantly faced with friendly faces shying away with a smile as I was speaking to them in English. This is when they realized that I was a Gringo (or a foreigner) in their country. I always wondered “what would be going on in their minds right now?”, “Is it that they intentionally want to avoid me, or is it that they are sharing the same issue that I am facing — not being able to express myself in a new language”. So, back to the pharmacy story, I showed up at the counter and a friendly face attended me: “Como posso te ajudar senhor”? (How can I help you sir?). Wow this language sounded like music to my ears — but, I was severely damaged by the cold and I needed a medicine! So, I wanted to anticipate the language clash and I decided to pull out my translator app on my phone and translate my words:”I need a medicine for cold” — feeling half excited I shouted with confidence to her in Portuguese:”eu preciso um remedio para frio!”. The woman looked at me with a strange stare, I immediately knew that something was off. I didn’t know what to do or what else to say — but I really needed to express myself properly then as I was requiring to care for my bad condition. Eventually, I picked up that the translation was not correct (after a while, I discovered that Cold is translated as Gripe) — whereas I was saying in Portuguese that I need a medicine for feeling chilly! Therefore, I decided to utilize the global body language, this is when I started acting that I was sneezing and coughing in front of the attendant, until she discerned what I could be asking for and she served me a cold medicine.
That incident left me in a shock, I thought that having lived in 4 countries before Brazil and in almost four corners of the world, I knew everything in the book about expatriation and cross cultural adaptation. It turned out that there is a whole new volume to that book, as I never got to live in a country where I do not speak the language nor have I ever had any problems with expressing myself freely and speaking out loud my thoughts. I could not do this when I started living in Brazil, I could not easily connect to random individuals in my everyday encounter.
I felt weak and intimidated, and with time passing by, that experience felt like a freight train hitting my psyche — it almost became a disability in me. I tried for several months: language classes, various techniques to speed language learning. These efforts, got me by to the level of food ordering or shopping — but it was not enough for me to feel more confident and less disabled. Meanwhile at my office, all employees wanted to speak to me in English probably because they have sympathized me, or because they wanted to practice and improve their English language skills. The point was that I did not have an environment that forced me to actually practice speaking Portuguese and I really wanted to connect with my fellow staff in the company in their own language.
When a light bulb went on!
More than 18 months went by, and I was still at that level of simply ordering food and shopping. In the middle of my frustration, and from my everyday English conversation with the employees at work, I started picking up on a pattern. They were using in their English, some literally translated phrases from Portuguese (for example, “you can count on me”, “can be”, “all good?” Etc…) — that illuminated a light bulb in my brain. I thought then, what if I start applying this pattern in my conversations with them? So, I have managed to translate multiple commonly used phrases from Portuguese to English even some culturally used sayings and metaphors that are very commonly used in Brazilian Portuguese, however not so commonly used in English. That helped me to start proving indirectly that I am familiar enough with the language but more so the cultural implications from the language. Next, I started introducing some simple words in Portuguese and mix it up with my conversation in English — as a result some people used to tell me: “You see, you are already speaking fluently in Portuguese”. Obviously I wasn’t, but they had validated me indirectly as I was connecting with them using a structure that they were familiar with. I really noticed that they were warming up to me more when I could be able to throw into the conversation some Portuguese words. I certainly had a better connection from there on in.
What did I learn from this?
Fast forward three years, I am now able to understand any conversation in Portuguese, yet still not quite fluent to the extent of having a philosophical debate. Yet by navigating my way through the labyrinth of the language impediment, I have learned much more about the culture — I realized that language is much more than just a means of communication. It is also an inseparable part of a culture. I also learned that there are some words that are deeply connected to certain emotions that may be untranslatable: an example that I personally like is “Saudades” (means missing — but with a whole lot of emotional nostalgic connotations to it) another word is Borogodo (that means when someone has the groove or the charm but sometimes have connotation of complexity as well — all in one word!).
Finally, this experience have taught me a lot more about expatriation but more so I learned that if you want to speak a new language — you need foremost to learn the culture behind this language (the food, the customs, habits, music, political history etc…) as they are completely integrated. While there is still some debate whether the particular language influences people’s thought process or it is indeed people’s culture that influences the language, there is no doubt that language and culture are closely connected. I heard once from a fellow expat that learning a language without the cultural framework in which it exists is like cooking ethnic food without the spices of the region. You simply will remove all of the flavor from the language.
