Blog Post Three: The Language Barrier

It was a normal work day for me like any other, when a Latino woman came into the branch and walked up to the teller beside my desk. At this time there was no one in line at the bank when the customer had entered, but of course as usually happens, the domino effect, in walks about five people behind her. Right away as I began to help my own customer I hear the teller beside me begin to enunciate her words and start speaking very loudly and slowly. The young Latino woman she was attempting to help did not evidently speak English very well, so as one can imagine communicating with her was very difficult, to the point where the teller was so frustrated she simply said to the woman, I CAN’T HELP YOU IF YOU DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH, THIS IS AMERICA AND OUR LANGUAGE IS ENGLISH. I was in complete shock at the tellers response and rudeness to this young lady.

I quickly apologized to the young Latino woman and asked her what she needed help with, in spanish. Apparently the teller beside me, had forgotten that I spoke Spanish and she was completely surprised when I had begun to assist the young lady and ended up with her walking out the door with a smile, whereas before she was very upset. She told me in Spanish why are people so rude when my English is not very good, I am just visiting the states to see some family, but I am trying to learn some English. She was laughing because she thought it was funny how the teller beside me had begun to speak very loudly and slow as if the young lady was deaf, not just misunderstanding.

Language is a beautiful thing. As was mentioned in this lesson, it allows us to express our ideas and communicate them freely. However, on the other hand as was demonstrated in this particular situation language can also cause a barrier and it can make it hard to communicate with others who do not speak the same language that we do. During these times, yes it may be difficult to get a message across, which is why it is nice to have gestures and other universal movements to assist us. Nelson Mandela once said, ” If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” This could not have been better stated, when we often use the common language between each other to communicate, it can create tension and sometimes misunderstandings, however, as was illustrated above by speaking the native language of an individual there is a sense of kinship that comes with that and almost an immediate bond because of the common ground.

 

References:

Hamilton, R. (2014, January 1). Dictionary of Quotes. Retrieved October 29, 2014, from http://www.dictionary-quotes.com/nelson-mandela

 

 

3 thoughts on “Blog Post Three: The Language Barrier

  1. Chelsea Cherie Jacobs

    I find your story to be very interesting and relevant. I can remember a time a few years ago when I was in a somewhat similar situation. I was driving with a family friend and got really hungry so we stopped at McDonalds. After we placed the order we drove around to pay and retrieve our food. Once we got our food, the family friend looked in the bag and couldn’t find a straw for her drink. So she turns to the woman at the counter who happened to be Latino and asked for a straw. The lady didn’t hear and asked her to repeat what she had said. The family friend thought she hadn’t understood her so she spoke loud and slowly “STRAW”. To make it a little worse she used her fingers to help make a slurping gesture, as if the woman was incapable of understanding English. The woman looked at her like she was crazy and simply said “you need a straw” and then proceeded to hand her a straw.

    I have the privilege of being able to travel to and from Bermuda a lot as my mom is from there. I spent my first two years of school there before transferring to Penn State. I have over those two years solidified the accent, which you could hear every now and again when I was younger. So now when I come home if my parents normally introduce me as their daughter who is visiting from Bermuda. If they have never been they start to speak to me as if there is suppose to a language barrier. And when I open up my mouth to speak you can tell they are surprised that I speak such fluent English. Bermudians speak English, they just have an accent, but it has truly amazed me how quick people are to judge.

    I truly feel that a lot of times we put the barrier there. We expect for the conversation to be difficult because we know the person is not from where we are from. So we go into the conversation annoyed that we are going to have to repeat ourselves, be misunderstood, or not comprehend what is being said. I think if we are more open in the beginning we could have less of a language barrier issue (but maybe that is just me).

  2. Kimberly Ann Dorrion

    I found your story very interesting, and I agree language is a beautiful thing. Sadly at the moment I am only fluent in one language but have a great desire to learn other languages. The art of being able to converse to many different people from different heritages and belief systems would be a privilege that many do not see as important in todays world. As I was reading your post what came to mind was also the lesson that we discussed memory in. Your example can also be considered a prime example on the effect that long-term memory has on us. When we are not experiencing situations such as the one you described before it is easy for people to forget attributes of their peers and take them for granted. I found your actions in the situation to be admirable. By your coworker not remembering that you could speak both Spanish and English, you described that the lack of day-to-day use of your talents were not evident to your coworker. This also showed that upon your language skills your coworker was reminded that you were fluent in both languages. This action is a good depiction of the feedback look that is present in our minds, that allows for quick understanding of a situation when data that has been forgotten can be quickly recalled at a later time.

  3. Angelina Teresa Bennici

    Working in customer service in my past years I have had similar situations occur. Especially looking Latina but never learned Spanish as a second language even though it was my mother’s first language. I have worked at retail stores in the past in a Hispanic dominant community and more often than not people would come up to me asking me questions automatically in Spanish and most of the time I did not understand what they were saying. Once and a great while I was able to help them with the very few words I understood and other gestures as you mentioned to aid in communication. It was frustrating but I think it was mostly frustrating because I “looked” like I should know Spanish and would be assumed to do so but didn’t and also because I simply wanted to help them but couldn’t. People would actually get offended and look at me almost in horror that I didn’t know Spanish even though I would try to be polite about it. I would never be rude or offend someone because they don’t know my language of English, especially because both of my parents spoke other languages as their first language and had a difficult time learning English in school, but other people in fact would treat me that way sometimes about Spanish even more so because I “look” like I should know Spanish. This was years ago. Now I am in my last semester of Spanish class. According to the computational model of second-language acquisition, in the first stage, learners retain certain features of the language input in short-term memory (this retained input is known as intake). Then, learners convert some of this intake into second-language knowledge, which is stored in long-term memory. In the last stage learners use this second-language knowledge to produce spoken output (Ellis, 1997). This relates to my learning of a second language because I have not been practicing Spanish that long so a lot of new information gets filtered out in the second stage when converting from short-term memory to long-term memory. I receive a lot of new information in a short period of time each week so although I understand a lot more now over the time of these classes I still lack in other areas such as actually speaking it and forming full informative sentences.

    Reference:
    Ellis, Rod (1997). Second Language Acquisition. Oxford Introductions to Language Study. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

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