{"id":1366,"date":"2018-04-03T05:38:34","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T21:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/2018\/04\/03\/how-living-abroad-has-changed-the-way-i-speak\/"},"modified":"2024-12-28T23:13:48","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T15:13:48","slug":"how-living-abroad-has-changed-the-way-i-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/how-living-abroad-has-changed-the-way-i-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"How Living Abroad Has Changed the Way I Speak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something is disconcerting about speaking to people you\u2019ve known for years, and realizing they can\u2019t understand you. I\u2019ve lived abroad so much that now I have to translate English into English! Most travel<\/a>ers of English-speaking countries will realize, and ex-pats in particular<\/a>, that not all English was created the same. They might as well be completely different languages at times!<\/p>\n

Picking up another accent<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was 16 when I first realized how big the divide in the English language can be. As a Kiwi in the midwest of the USA, I was definitely not always understood<\/a>, and I\u2019m not just talking about the obvious difference in word choice. Asking if we were \u201cgoing into town today\u201d was met with puzzlement and the answer was that we live in town. I meant to any shops. They must have wondered what was wrong with me!<\/p>\n

By the time I returned to New Zealand after almost a year away, I had a half-baked Kiwi\/American accent that sounded off in both countries. I lost most of it back to the Kiwi way, but some words have never come back. Bathroom versus toilet for one.<\/p>\n

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Image:\u00a0Expatica<\/p>\n

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Being mistaken for another nationality<\/strong><\/p>\n

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As I\u2019ve travelled in my adult life people have often had trouble picking up where I\u2019m from. Like most Kiwis I get mistaken for an Australian the majority of the time, but I also get American, Canadian and British. I\u2019ve lived in all of those countries, so it\u2019s not that surprising, but I guess realising each one has had and effect on my language formation is.<\/p>\n

Losing my Kiwi slang<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having lived away from New Zealand for five years means that I\u2019ve lost a lot of Kiwi slang, either through not using it because no one understands it, or because I don\u2019t even know what\u2019s cool anymore (sob). There are a few words I cling to like a lifeline and refuse to ever stop saying, purely because they\u2019re so ingrained and I don\u2019t think anything else is a better option. Give me a dairy, jandals and gladwrap over a corner shop, flip flops and cling film any day.<\/p>\n

Changing the way I speak to be understood<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I meet new people I often subconsciously change the way I speak, sometimes enough that people I know realise and start giving me weird looks. This is partly from living abroad, and partly from having friends from so many different places. Did you realize there\u2019s a particular way Germans learn English, or Spanish people, or French? There are certain words they\u2019ll understand or ways of phrasing something, and once you know that, consciously or not, it changes the way you might speak to them.<\/p>\n

Moving to Spain was the first time that I had\u00a0lived in a country where English wasn\u2019t the dominant language. It was a huge learning curve in trying to learn the Spanish language in between teaching<\/a> English, but also in learning how to phrase things differently so that Spanish people could understand me better.<\/p>\n

My Scottish flatmate and I would joke about how living in Spain made us forget how to speak English, but there was actually a bit of truth to it! I could tell my English was off, and when people would ask me how to say things correctly I would have to think very hard because I was so used to hearing English spoken in a different way that I couldn\u2019t remember if it was right or not. So much for being an English teacher\u2026<\/p>\n

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Image: travelgc.ga<\/p>\n

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Trying to learn another language<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Living in Spain gave me an insight for the first time into struggle of communicating in another language, and made me realise how amazing people who can speak fluently in more than one language are. As a native English speaker I\u2019ve often felt guilty for only speaking English.\u00a0My Spanish is still only low level, although I understand a whole lot more than I speak, so I still feel inferior at times when I have to answer the \u201chow many languages question do you speak\u201d when I\u2019m travelling. Learning another language isn\u2019t as easy as\u00a0just moving to another country!<\/p>\n

Learning another language actually teaches you a lot about your own language, and guys, English is HARD. I realised how many more different words we have for everything, or how colloquial our language can be. And that also made me more aware when I\u2019m speaking to someone who is learning English and helped me to phrase things in a simpler way. Yet again, changing how I speak.<\/p>\n

Realising how to speak differently to non-native speakers<\/strong><\/p>\n

One thing I have noticed is the difference when I\u2019m with family members or friends who haven\u2019t had experience teaching English or communicating much with non-English speakers. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s quite as dire as\u00a0this BBC article\u00a0makes out, but we definitely don\u2019t make things easy on non-native speakers, whether we realise it or not! In reverse, I have tried to communicate in Spanish and had to ask them to repeat something or slow down and they haven\u2019t made any adjustments to the way they speak to try and help me to understand. So simplifying your language to help someone understand goes both ways!<\/p>\n

Having no clue what people are saying<\/strong><\/p>\n

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When I first moved to Scotland I had a job where I had to speak to people over the phone daily. Mistake. I couldn\u2019t understand people half the time, and I ended up employing the trick of saying \u201cI\u2019m sorry, the line is bad and I can\u2019t hear you that well\u201d which usually worked to slow them down instead of me having to say\u2026 um, what on earth are you talking about?!<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m living back in Scotland I\u2019m getting used to a wider vocabulary again, but also back to Scottish. It\u2019s funny to think how when I first arrived that there was no much I couldn\u2019t comprehend, and I still get tripped up, especially in a group of people all speaking or if I don\u2019t hear someone properly. Add in an English fianc\u00e9 who speaks like a whole other language again and I have no clue sometimes!<\/p>\n

I feel like language as a whole is evolving around the world, as we become more globalised. On an individual level I have no idea how I\u2019m going to sound in the future. Will I stop sounding like a Kiwi altogether? Incorporate more Scottish words and phrases? While not being easily identifiable as a Kiwi sometimes makes me feel a bit sad and disconnected, I also can\u2019t help but be happy that I\u2019ve taken on a more global accent. I am after all, an expat, and everything that goes with it.<\/p>\n

Have you ever taken on another accent, learned a language, or realised your speech has changed? Let us know by commenting below!!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0Not A Nomad Blog<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Something is disconcerting about speaking to people you\u2019ve known for years, and realizing they can\u2019t understand you. I\u2019ve lived abroad so much that now I have to translate English into …","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[60,353,306,3541,29,34,701,214],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-china","tag-e-china-cities","tag-hiredchina","tag-how-living-abroad-has-changed-the-way-i-speak","tag-jobs","tag-jobs-in-china","tag-teaching","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25427,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/25427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}