Language!
I, myself, speak five languages
So I like to think that I will not have communication issues wherever I go. In most cases, this assumption was valid. In some cases, I found myself failing miserably.
I divided the world according to my linguistic skills.
So when I travel to the Arab world and I used to do that often before COVID. So if I do, I have no worries because I speak Arabic native. It is my mother tongue per se.
More than that, I can speak the Persian language, “The French of the east,” some call it Farsi. With that, I can communicate with Persian people in Iran, to be specific. I speak Dari, which means I can communicate with people from Afghanistan and many others worldwide. I speak Tajik, the language of the people in Tajikistan.
Persian, Dari, and Tajik are similar but still very different because language is not only words; language is about culture!
Those two are attached together when you try to learn a particular language. You can memorize words and communicate, but it is not the same without the culture.
These languages with a distinguished and rich culture allow me to talk to many people in the former Soviet Union. But, unfortunately, even some millions of people in China nowadays are under the oppression of the communist regime just because they are different.
My fifth language is my tomatoes, so to speak. I can use it anywhere and almost everywhere…
English!
I learned my English from my teacher, the British style. Then I got used to the American style after moving to the states. I had to struggle at the beginning, but not for long.
In some cultures, they count a man with the number of languages he can speak!
If you speak one, you are one man.
If you speak two, you are two men, and so on and so forth.
I had an interview for a position that requires 25% traveling. I was pleased that the interviewer was a project manager who traveled abroad and was open-minded and funny.
We talked a lot about different aspects, about the job and the issues related to it. Then, near the end, he said, I have a question.
With a smile, I nodded in agreement.
So the project manager asked me., “What do you call a person who can speak two languages?”
I said, “bilingual.”
“What about one who speaks three languages?”
I answered, “trilingual.”
Then he asked, “What do you call one who speaks one language?”
“American,” I said.
He laughed loudly, then got up and shook my hand.
“You got the job, my friend,” he reiterated.
Thank you for reading.
