21 Strange Communication Challenges Bilingual People Experience

Being bilingual, or more accurately bi-cultural, can be a confusing state of mind. You find yourself constantly choosing one or the other cultural norm depending on the situation. Sometimes, the norms are vastly different. Sometimes there are no parallels, which makes it very hard to explain.

When you leave the household where one language is spoken and begin to live in the external world is when you really notice the distinctions. And when you are bi-cultural and move to a foreign country, everything becomes accentuated. 

Lucky for me, they speak English (but not American) in Ireland so I had a slight advantage, but I still had to learn the culture. And my husband is bilingual in German and English, so he struggles with the same but differently. His family speaks some English but they switch back and forth in my presence, and I don't speak a word of German. It's the same for him with my family who bounce back and forth between Ukrainian and American English.  Here are a few things I have observed that universally cause struggles.

1. Racing along in a heated conversation in one language when suddenly you can only think of a critical word in the other language. Your mind goes blank and you're stuck trying to come up with the right word in the right language.

2. Going to a shop to buy a utensil for the home, only to find you don't know what it's called because at home you only referred to it in your native tongue.

3. Unknowingly switching languages in the middle of a conversation. You only notice when the person you are speaking to is looking at you oddly.

4. Expressing yourself adequately, because certain expressions do not translate well and when you try to explain it comes out nonsensical.

5. You apply your accents indiscriminately. People can never tell where you are from because your accent doesn't really sound American nor does it sound Ukrainian. It's somewhere mid-Atlantic. (And I apply a Ukrainian accent to all foreign languages for some odd reason.)

6. People are always asking you to say something in Ukrainian. You end up asking them what they want to hear in Ukrainian, but of course they don't understand because you said it in Ukrainian. And when they asked what you said, you start making up stories like, "Oh, I just told you that you look stunning."

7. You become the moderator in a mixed group of friends or family. When you gather with people who speak only one language or the other, you interpret for each and can even end up in the middle of debates between the parties.

8. You are automatically the political expert for any matter that has to do with the language. So you have to stay on top of everything happening in the country because people will ask you about anything.

9.  Your friends will introduce you as the "exotic" friend. You feel pressured to live up to that image but find yourself trying to explain it away as normal. 

10. Pronouncing your name is a daily struggle. (Mine is often Diarhea or Darina not Daria). Then you have to explain what your name means and where it originated from (Ukrainian-Greek-Persian). You also create memorable tricks for pronunciation ("like aria with a D in front").

11. People ask you to translate Russian for them. You explain patiently that you speak Ukrainian, not Russian, and that you really don't understand Russian. They have a lot more letters and words that you cannot pronounce which are more Asian in root than European. Then they say, "but it's the same alphabet!" And you try to explain that that's like saying that French and English are the same language because they use the Latin alphabet. You walk away while they are silently thinking through that dilemma.

12. You never use your real name when making reservations or waiting at Starbucks. You use a fake name and spare the aggravation. (Mine is Conrad. I stole it from Joseph Conrad.)

13. Feeling an automatic connection with anyone who speaks the language. Like feeling the need to go over and introduce yourself to a stranger who may be a mass murderer, but he's Ukrainian so he must be okay.

14. Having more than one keyboard on your laptop/tablet and your phone and switching between them multiple times in a single chat session.

15. Your sense of humour confuses people when you realize you used an expression that got lost in translation. 

16. If you are watching something on TV or a movie and someone speaks in your language, you want to stand up and cheer and tell everyone, "hey that was Ukrainian she was speaking."

17. You feel like you have two personalities, one for each language and culture. And when you travel to a foreign country, you're not sure which one to use.

18. When you go back to your country, people make fun of your outdated language because your development stopped when you left while theirs continued to evolve.

19. When you hear a word that sounds similar to one in your language, you assume that it has the same meaning. Never ASSUME. Always translate the word first.

20. You can’t sing a song without having to translate its meaning to your friends. But you realize halfway through that it is not as meaningful as you thought it was when translated.

21. Curse words for certain things come out in the right language for that event. "Cholera" is good when you forget something but "shite" is a natural for a dropped glass. And some curse words just don't translate at all. How do you explain "Шляк би тебе трафив"?


That's it for today! Do you have any that I missed?  Wait 'till I get to church Slavonic as another language to negotiate.