Beyond words: communicating across a language barrier
“Amar nam Kalie.” My name is Kalie.
I’ve been living in Kolkata just over three months now, and that’s about all I can say in Bengali, the predominant local language, with full confidence in my grammar and pronunciation. Don’t get me wrong — through my one-on-one tutoring sessions with a coworker’s mother, I’ve learned enough vocabulary to fumble through basic communication, but 99% of the time my grammar is a hot mess, my pronunciation is off, and the pace of my speaking is delayed. When it comes to comprehension, I can understand about 60% of what I’m told, but only when I’m spoken to slowly and the speakers are willing to repeat themselves.
I’m proud of how much Bengali I’ve managed to learn in such a short time, but I’m still nowhere near able to communicate with fluency. That’s why I’ve dedicated this article to chronicling my struggles and lessons learned while communicating across a language barrier.
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Before I arrived in India, my lack of Bengali and Hindi knowledge was my biggest fear. This wasn’t going to be my first time living abroad for multiple months, but it’d be my first time going somewhere I couldn’t speak the local language. (Bengali and English are the official languages of Kolkata, but Bengali and Hindi are most spoken.) In the four months leading up to my trip, I did have the opportunity to learn Hindi via Rosetta Stone, but not Bengali. I was told by the team at Destiny, where I’d be working, that the girls (the beneficiaries) spoke mainly Bengali, and that Hindi wouldn’t be very useful. So, after two half-hearted attempts at Hindi Rosetta Stone lessons, I held off from learning any language until I hit the ground in February.
I was worried big-time, but nobody else seemed to be. I knew from my job description that I was expected to lead workshops and interact daily with women and girls who were survivors of human trafficking or highly vulnerable to being trafficked, and who mostly had Bengali as a first language. As if I wasn’t nervous enough about how to behave and engage with people who had survived more trauma than I could fathom, I also had to grapple with the fact that words alone would simply never be enough to connect with them.
Yet when I expressed my concerns during the Skype calls I had with Destiny’s founder and staff members leading up to my trip, they brushed them off. “You’ll do fine,” they assured me. “You’ll be able to communicate.”
I didn’t understand how that could possibly be true, but I reluctantly accepted it and hoped for the best.
When I finally did land in India, I was immediately overwhelmed and frustrated by my inability to communicate. I figured I had to learn as much Bengali as possible, as soon as possible, otherwise I’d be doomed to miscommunication for the rest of my stay. Two weeks after my arrival, I began private tutoring sessions to learn the language. I picked up some vocabulary and sentence structure relatively quickly (despite the caveats about my horrible grammar, etc.) and soon I could make small-talk and every-day conversation with the girls at work in their native tongue.
My approach was to learn as much Bengali as I could, and start using it with the office staff and beneficiaries immediately. However, the way I navigated the language barrier wasn’t necessarily the best way to go about it, and I didn’t recognize the problems I created until I could see them in hindsight. So, here are my lessons learned:
1. Say something, anything!
Before I started studying Bengali, I had an awful habit of remaining dead silent when interacting with non-English speakers. Even with people who could speak English, but couldn’t do so confidently, I’d say little to nothing. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to them. Rather, I was afraid of making myself or them look stupid via our mutual failure to understand each other (or, my fear of our failure). Instead of taking the dive and being willing to mess up, repeat myself and connect with others, I stayed quiet and just smiled a lot.
Since then, I’ve realized staying quiet and smiling is not the solution. My avoidance created an invisible divide between me and the girls at the office plus some staff members at Destiny. Although I didn’t intend it as snobbery, I’m sure it came off as if I’d only speak to the most fluent English-speakers and had no interest in anyone else. But the biggest way I failed was by selling the girls and the staff short. The truth, as I later discovered, is that everyone who works at Destiny, no matter their status or level of formal education, has some basic command of English and decent listening comprehension (even when they shyly insist otherwise). If I had endeavored to speak with them in English, slowly and clearly, we could’ve communicated without my learning Bengali at all, and would’ve formed bonds of friendship even sooner than we ultimately did.
2. Blunder through and pantomime
I realized the girls and staff could all speak at least a little English by observing Erika and Nancy, two fellow interns from Canada, with equally nonexistent Bengali knowledge. (Erika also ended up joining in on the private tutoring, but here I’m describing what I saw in my first two weeks, when our classes still hadn’t started.)
Every morning when Erika and Nancy arrived to work and before leaving the office in the afternoon, they’d spend at least 10 minutes in the production room with the girls, observing, asking questions and making conversation. Granted, their communication efforts were not 100% perfect, but they definitely succeeded at getting basic points across. They’d ask the girls: “How are you?” “What are you making?” “What work do you have today?” and receive perfectly good answers. They’d joke all together, and when words weren’t enough, they’d pantomime actions or point to objects. And, when ultimately the conversation arrived at a point where the ideas became too complex to understand with their limited knowledge of each other’s languages, they’d laugh it off and deftly shift topics or enjoy companionable silence.
After observing these interactions, I was floored to realize how much English everyone did know and understand. More important, I learned that words aren’t the only, or necessarily best, way to communicate. Actions — gestures, facial expressions, hugs, shoves, handholding and laughter — convey much more than words ever could, and they come with the special vulnerability of their authenticity and spontaneity.
3. Try to learn the local speak
Even though I’ve realized that I could get by communicating with the Destiny family in only English, I’ve stayed committed to learning Bengali. Every time I finish a lesson, I come into the office with one more verb tense or vocab word in my arsenal. My growing command of Bengali has helped us communicate more complex ideas, as has the girls’ ever-growing English knowledge and comprehension. Nowadays, our conversations happen in an English-Bengali merger, with my frequent interjections of “Mane ki?” (“What does that mean?”), but increasingly, we’re able to understand each other at a higher level.
That all said, learning Bengali for the sake of communicating is only the secondary value it’s brought. The primary value of my studying Bengali is that it has created opportunities to connect. As a new speaker of the language, I fail frequently. My failure creates moments for me to learn and for the girls and staff to teach me Bengali, just as I teach them English, so that our relationship is reciprocal. Moreover, every time I mess up, I’m making myself vulnerable to judgement, laughter and correction. When the girls respond to my vulnerability with encouragement and affirmation that they’ve understood me despite my flawed language, we’re able to foster deeper trust and mutual respect. It’s not in the moments of communication success, but rather in the moments of failure, when our deepest bonds have been forged.
4. But also, speak English!
I just finished articulating why my effort to learn Bengali has been hugely important in relationship-building here at Destiny. Now I’m going to go against my own word and explain why it’s equally — if not more important — to speak English at least half the time. First off, all the girls and staff I’ve met have expressed to me their desire to speak English. They want and cherish the opportunity to practice, and as a fluent English-speaker, I consider it my responsibility to create those opportunities for them while I’m here. Speaking English often improves their fluency and comprehension, but most important, it builds confidence in their ability to understand and communicate in a new, uncomfortable language. That’s also why, even though I don’t necessarily love teaching, I’ve stayed committed to running English language workshops at Destiny’s main office and one of its project sites. Over the past months, I’ve watched as the women and girls’ English-speaking confidence has absolutely bloomed — in tandem with their comfort levels with me — and I’m extremely proud to see these changes in them.
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With one month left, and much, much left to learn, I’m doing my best to implement these lessons every day. I’m speaking up, pantomiming when words fail, and staying equally committed to my studying Bengali and their learning English. Our communication isn’t perfect, and it may well never be, but so far, we’ve exchanged plenty of stories, lessons, and laughter — and for me, that’s what it’s all about.
