One thing that I really didn't anticipate coming to America was the language barrier. True, it isn't a very high barrier, but it exists and it can be frustrating. It's especially frustrating because it's a bit like a two-way mirror: I can usually see through it as if it wasn't even there, but to those around me it is all too apparent.
This is all television's fault. The schedules of every English-speaking country outside the US are stuffed full of American shows. We foreigners have all been exposed to a wide variety of American accents and words for years and years. We have no trouble understanding them and many of us even have quite an ear for different regional accents.
But the opposite is not true. There is very little British television on US screens, and virtually none from Australia or New Zealand (but they do exist - Planet Green seems particularly fond of them). The net result is that while I've been listening to Americans talking all my life, most Americans have never heard a New Zealander speak. Never heard my accent, my idioms or the little phrases with which, I now realise, Kiwis pepper their speech.
Of course people here are too polite to say they don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I'm reliably informed that many of my interlocutors are just smiling and nodding when I speak - and sometimes I catch them at it, for example if I ask a question and receive only a look of panicky bewilderment in reply. Otherwise I wouldn't know: I can understand them and it is very difficult to remember that they can't always understand me.
That's not to say that there aren't occasions where I have trouble understanding people, but generally only with vocabulary: slang that I don't get or words whose meanings have a subtly different meaning in the US.
Linguistic differences can get in the way, but they aren't all bad. There is an upside, which I'll get to next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment