Um...Could You Repeat That?: Culture Shock with a Foreign Language

Posted by Suzanne Swartz Jul 6, 2009

When traveling for the first time to a country that speaks a foreign language, you may encounter a few aspects of the language that your university course or intensive language class may or may not have covered:

• Slang
• Idioms
• Local dialects
• People talking much faster than your professors and classmates ever did
• Cultural references you may not quite understand

I recently returned from a week-long trip to Italy, and my limited knowledge of Italian was put to the test. I had traveled to Italy once before and had just enough Italian language skills under my belt to get from Point A to Point B. But this trip was a bit different: I knew that I would not be able to communicate in English with many of the people I was visiting. (No pressure!)

On this trip I was able to re-confirm what I already knew: Even if you think you have a basic enough grasp of a language (from a few phrases to a few years of instruction), total immersion + limited knowledge = headache. Needless to say, I took a few afternoon naps.

Advice? Bring a dictionary that can fit into a small travel bag, try to learn a few phrases or sounds common to the local dialect, and, if possible, communicate in the foreign language with native speakers from that region before you leave.