So, today i had an interesting experience.
I was going around with my friend (that I'm staying with at the moment) and going with her while she went to visit with some different friends. At one point on the way to the house she apologized and said that most the people here speak Spanish so you might not be able to understand what going on.
Jokingly i laught it off pointing out that i was used to it, with being an English girl that grew up in Luxembourg and isn't fluent in french. However, in my head i was thinking that it would be great because it would be an excuse not to talk to people.
(I feel like at this point i should clarify that i am a rather social person, i love being around people, but i find the initial introduction stage difficult, its just awkward and i feel like it takes longer than a five minute conversation for people to know the real me)
This got me thinking though, should a language barrier really be something to stop all communication!
Despite living in luxembourg for almost 6 years i am in no way fluent in French, i know its no excuse but my social circles were mostly english speakers, my high school was in english and consequently all my friends spoke english, the only time i needed french was at church and that was just a few hours once a week. However, i grew to understand what was going on. Yes, of course it takes a lot more concentration and creativeness but it is possible to not know a language but still understand.
Now this is not fact, just what i seem to have noticed and its probably the same with other languages however, I'm only familiar enough with the english language to comment on it. Luckily there are a lot of similar words, the family i am staying with are spanish speakers and last night we were reading the scriptures together although the other people were reading aloud in spanish, i could follow along perfectly with my English set. This is because i paid attention and noticed words that sounded similar or simply by their tone of voice if they were finishing a sentence or at a comma. There are countless people that i have had communication with, without speaking the same language. Accommodations can be made, people can speak slower (not in an obnoxious way just in a pronunciation way) so similarities can be found, hand actions can he involved, drawing even props! And why not! why should it be an out of the ordinary thing to take the time to understand each other!
I'm not saying that i do these things all the time i'll be the first to admit that when someone stands up in front of a crowd and starts to speak in another language my brain is hardwired to switch off and not pay attention. But now I'm starting to wonder what i may have missed out on, how much i actually would have understood if i had taken the time to listen and try to decode what was being said. Yes, i would have made mistakes and yes often i would not have got anywhere near to the truth of what was being said.
But, i would have gained something from it.
My mind would have been engaged and i would have ceased the opportunity to attempt to understand something, even if the only thing i had gained was the fact that i didn't understand more than a few words, i would have tried and learned at least a tiny fraction of their language, even if it is just that they have a lot of english sounding words.
I feel like it is often the case that when we find out someone doesn't speak our language we immediately move on trying to find someone who does. I think this is because we like convenience we don't want something to the more time than it needs to, but maybe if we spent more time trying to understand someone we would learn something far more valuable than the time we spent learning it.
