December 11, 2008

Language?

It had never occurred to me before until someone said it was the "language" problem.
Some people behave rude or dont explain their weird actions. You keep wondering why and cant think of anything. Then someone tells you that this person is not very conversant in English and hence does that. There have been times when I have spoken to people with whom I have no language in common, like a vegetable vendor in Chennai. Atleast I tried. I feel the giving up part is the problem and not the fluency in the language. If you care a little for someone, even a stranger for that matter you go that extra mile to make an effort. Blessed are those people who can just ignore others when a response is expected out of them and act like that is the most natural thing to do.

5 comments:

dilip said...

Yes! Terming such things as language problem is just a way to ignore or cover up what happened...What i find more amusing is others actually justifying such things..

Anonymous said...

I agree...this is especially true when south indians try to screw northies and pass off their rude behaviour as "language problem"

Howere there are times when it helps
i went to register a theft complaint with the police in Bangalore and the cop asked me for money in Kannada.A corrupt policeman asking money is a pan-Indian phenomenon and so I could easily make out that he was asking for money.However I pretended that I was not getting a word of what he was saying ,so blamed it(my not understanding ) on the language barrier, just said a plain 'Thank you' and came out of the police station.

For once the excuse "language problem " helped :)

Guna Vishwa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Guna Vishwa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Guna Vishwa said...

Hi,

I read somewhere that when English reached Australia for the very first time they saw a strange animal jumping around the jungle. They asked in sign langugae the natives of Australia what that animal was called. The natives couldnt understand what they were being asked, they said "Kangaroo" meaning "I dont know what you are saying" and the name stuck.

I have no clue if this is true. But it definitely is funny.

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