Make a fool out of yourself
A few years ago I held a presentation about the joy and the struggles of learning new languages as an adult.
The presentation was part of an amazing event series called ‘Jabb’ (= Norwegian slang for ‘chat’), inspired by the Portuguese format Conversas.
‘Lær deg et nytt språk, bitch’ or ‘Learn a new language, bitch’ was the name of my presentation. I shared stories that helped me learn Norwegian and helped me treasure dialect expressions in my mind. Forever.
“Bring your bitch”
Many years ago I started a new job in Norway and I was a real beginner with the local language. However my colleagues spoke Norwegian to me at all times — after my kind request — so that I could speed up the learning process.
One day my boss comes into the office and invites me over to his place for dinner. I immediately accept, while smiling and loudly saying ‘JA!’.
He leaves my office, but then comes back and adds “Ta med kjerringa di”. I asked if he could repeat that as I didn’t quite catch what he said.
He says “ta med kjerringa!”. I then decide to do something that works 100% of the time in Scandinavia: nod and say JA with confidence.
After he leaves I quickly open Google Translate and try to understand what he was saying. According to Google, ‘kjerringa’ means ‘bitch’. The whole sentence would translate to “bring your bitch”.
I could not believe that my new boss called my girlfriend a bitch!
I pace to his office, slam the door open and tell him how disrespectful it was to call my partner a bitch. I proudly walk back to my office.
Then, in our lunch break, my colleagues tell me that they’re invited to dinner too. And one of them asks me “kommer kjerringa di?” (“is your bitch coming”?). I stop for a second. With extreme patience I ask him why he would ever call my girlfriend — who he has never met — a bitch.
He says “no no no, that’s not what it means”. It’s a dialect word that just means woman, girlfriend or wife.
😐
This is just one of the million times I made a fool out of myself. Yet, I never forgot that dialect word and I got a story out of it, so yay? 🤔
When it’s about design, I’m usually fighting my bad habit of perfectioning everything before I open my mouth and share it. For some reason, my brain works the opposite way for languages.
Learning a new language is hard, but it’s also so much fun and most people welcome and cherish your effort of speaking their native language more than you might think.
Don’t hold back, try speaking. Make mistakes and make a fool out of yourself.
You’ll learn that lesson forever and you’ll have a story to tell.
