On the Forum, I often read an angry command: read with understanding! The fear of not being understood, of being unable to communicate, is just as powerful as the desire to be understood.
The Tower of Babel and animals speaking with human voices on Christmas Eve constantly remind us that the desire for communication without barriers has always existed. The Americans have dealt with this problem best in their fantastic cinema. In films, even aliens speak English.
On Christmas Eve, when we try to communicate with both loved ones and strangers, I will present a few stories about a lack of understanding.
In a five-star foreign hotel restaurant, a waiter approaches the table of a lone Polish woman. It is clear that he has no time. With an absent gaze, he looks over the tourist and mechanically prepares the pad on which he must write down every guest’s room number. His thoughts are already at the next table, because the dining room is full and there is plenty of work. Without looking at the woman, he says:
– Hallo!
– Hello! – the Polish woman replies brightly.
– Your room? – the waiter asks, already ready to write down the room number on the pad, but his hand remains idle because the Polish woman is silent. The waiter smiles and, looking at her, repeats:
– Room.
– No, no – the woman shakes her head – I don’t drink.
The waiter, of course, understands nothing, so with great patience he repeats the English word for room. Just in case, he also gives the French word. This seems to unleash the tourist’s inventiveness, because shaking her head, she says eagerly:
– “Noł rum”, “noł rum”, I don’t drink!
This brief denial completely knocks the restaurant employee out of his daily routine. He stands helpless before the woman, because if she does not have a room in this hotel, which is how he interprets her reaction, she has no right to eat in the hotel restaurant either. At that moment, the cavalry arrives in the form of the resident tour representative. After the explanation, the woman giggles nervously, while the waiter sighs and learns the word “room” in yet another, perhaps his fiftieth, unknown language. In Polish!
Language barriers are a classic source of jokes. Who does not know the joke about an Englishman and a Polish receptionist who replies tra ta ta tra ta ta when the Englishman orders two teas for room twenty-two (in transcription: tu ti tu rum tu tu)? Or the punchline about a meeting between a polyglot tourist and a local who speaks only his native language, which the polyglot does not know? The punchline goes: He knew so many languages and still could not communicate. That is how a fellow countryman invariably sums up the tourist’s efforts.
My friend, a tour representative, once went on a trip to a nature reserve with a group for the first time. There, she asked for an English-speaking guide, as she spoke the language fluently. She got one. The man spoke with a Moroccan accent, but there were no major problems until the group approached a stream beyond which there were supposedly: “Łajt pigs”.
– White pigs? – my friend asked.
– Yes, yes – the guide confirmed, meaning “wilde pigs” (wild pigs).
– Ladies and gentlemen – announced my friend, who had heard “white” rather than “wild” – there are white pigs living beyond the river. The tourists did not react.
– And what do those “łajt pigs” eat? – my friend asked the guide.
– They eat “majs” – he added.
– Is “majs” an English word? – my friend asked.
– Yes, yes – the guide confirmed with great conviction.
– Do you mean mouse? Mickey Mouse? – she asked.
– Yes, yes – the guide confirmed, although in reality he had used the French word maïs (corn) and had never watched Disney films.
– Ladies and gentlemen – my slightly uncertain friend said – beyond the river there are white pigs that eat mice.
The tourists solemnly looked at the vast cornfield, where not a single white pig appeared, and nodded knowingly.
Language blunders, or fear of them, often tie our tongues. One morning in a hotel in Nice, I myself came close to ordering several beers per person for the entire group for breakfast. The problem lay in two similarly sounding French words: beer (transcribed as “biehr”) and butter (“behr”). Sleepy and responding to a tourist who had asked for butter, I approached the waiter serving the dining room and demanded:
– Please put beers on the tables.
– Beers? – the surprised waiter asked.
– Yes, beers – I repeated decisively.
– How many? – he gave in, although I am sure he did not have any.
And since butter is served in hotels in small five-gram portions, I replied:
– Three or four each.
I do not know what this waiter knew about Polish customs, but he resourcefully asked me:
– Alcohol in the morning?
And that woke me up!
Yet there are people who believe that if they speak slowly and clearly enough in their native language – watch my lips as I speak – they will be able to communicate anywhere.
Once I found my tourist at the reception desk of a French hotel hypnotizing the receptionist with the slowly and clearly pronounced word: STAMP, STAMP. When I asked her what she needed, it turned out that she wanted to ask whether she could buy a stamp at the reception desk for a postcard to Poland. The tourist was convinced that the receptionist had already understood part of the sentence: “Can one buy at the reception desk…”, and only needed an explanation of what the item was.
– I’ll manage on my own, Ms Grażynka – she said to me with a pleasant smile when I offered her help. Poor receptionist.
An Arab philosopher wrote that distant foreigners who share our thoughts are closer to us than our closest loved ones who do not understand us.
My friend’s father, a Pole who spoke only Polish, went mushroom picking with his brother-in-law, a Frenchman who spoke only French. After returning from the forest, he began telling his wife what soups and dishes Jean-Paul liked, what his hobbies were, and other intimate details of the Frenchman’s life.
– How do you know all that? – his surprised wife exclaimed. – You do not speak French, and he does not speak Polish!
– Somehow, I understood him perfectly in that forest – the man explained, himself surprised.
I understand her because, just like him, I communicate with Kaltum, my husband’s sister, who speaks only Arabic, of which I know a few words. When my husband comes home and tells me about something that happened in the immediate family, I always reply that I know, because Kaltum has already told me everything. This always surprises my husband. Once he decided to take part in our conversation and witnessed a real theatrical scene. We “talked” to each other using props, making faces, helping ourselves with our hands, or acting out little scenes with very little dialogue. My husband nearly died laughing, but I swear to you, she and I often communicate better than he and I do, speaking in a language we both know.
Language schools say that it does not matter how you speak a foreign language; what matters most is that you communicate.
My friend taught her tourists a little trick so they would not bother her every time they needed the television remote, even when all the channels were in Arabic. She gave them a short course. She told them to make a loose fist and press their thumb against the curled index finger, in a gesture resembling changing channels with a television remote.
When I entered the reception area and saw a man around forty with a “why am I making a fool of myself?” smile, performing the gesture described above, I was surprised. I stopped with another tourist to watch the outcome. The man extended his clenched fist and pressed it with his thumb, at which point the smiling receptionist handed him a remote. The tourist was overjoyed, and his joy turned into a sense of superiority when the other man asked him:
– Show me too, please.
I wish you such communication across borders, cultures, genders, worldviews, habits and stereotypes this holiday season.
The End, Fin, The End, Fine, das Ende, конец…
Grażyna Hanaf