The Quora Chronicles – Part 4
Often when people think of online discussion forums, political debates surrounding controversial topics such as abortion, same-sex marriage, or racial inequality are among the first talking points to come to mind. There are also, however, a surprisingly large number of positive discussions which often serve to, at least temporarily, restore my faith in humanity and convince me, in spite of much evidence to the contrary, that good and well-meaning people do exist. Unfortunately, however, there is always, (and at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I do mean ALWAYS) at least one person whose mission in life appears to be to rain on everyone else’s positive-thinking parade.
As an online English as a second language instructor, I, not surprisingly, regularly receive “requests to answer” on English or language-lated Quora questions. Some of them relate to grammar, vocabulary, or unsual English idioms. One particularly sweet question that I was asked to answer on Quora was this:
I have a crush on a guy who speaks very little English, and I know he likes me back. Could things ever work out between us, or is the language barrier just too great?
My answer, which could probably be classified as a “qualified yes” went like this:
“It depends. If one or both of you are committed to studying and learning about the other one’s language and culture, I would think that working together toward a common goal would actually draw you closer. If not, then it would probably be very difficult. Even couples who speak the same language sometimes break up as the result of a lack of communication. So if you speak different languages then you just have to work that much harder to communicate.”
This answer received over 27,000 views, 5 upvotes, and no negative comments.
Other answers were more romantic:
“Love has no barriers.”
“The barriers won’t be too great at all. Of course, there will always be issues, but every couple has issues. Go into it thoughtfully & you’ll have the same chance as any other couple. I’ve known many with this issue where the relationships worked really well!
Go for it!“
And still others took a practical approach with both positive encouragement, with a few sensible cautions thrown in.
“Try and learn his language and he should do the same for you it would be very romantic if you can do that. Maybe you guys can go to language lessons together!
That being said there are some things you need to prepare for if it goes further. Simple things that will annoy you, unless you jettison them early on, such as:
Arguing when neither of you speaks the other person’s language is literally one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. It is so hard to try and say something to someone you love knowing full well they cannot understand what you are saying.
Use caution when you do start to speak each other’s language. Try not to be offended when something is said that sounds offensive. Shades of meaning is a very complicated thing to do in a new language. (‘You look fat and tired today.’ but really he wanted to say ‘Ahhh babe, I hate that outfit.’)“
But there are always those “Negative Neds or Nellies” who like to respond with sarcasm:
“Oh, if only people could learn to speak other languages.”
or what I like to call the “Culturally Incurious” (the kind of Americans who travel to Paris or Rome and get angry when waiters and hotel clerks don’t speak English) who respond like this:
“Why aren’t you teaching him English now?“
Finally, there are the downright “Negative Neds and Nellies” who say:
“I had a relationship like this in the past, but it didn’t last long.”
While these folks can be frustrating, I did ready an interesting article by Dr. Raj Raghunathan, in Psychology Today which did shed some light on the tendancy of some people to alwasy see the dark side along with some tips for dealing with them. Raghunathan states that perpetually negative people are often the product of highly critical parents and their negativity is an attempt to gain control, the thinking being that, “If I criticize other people and situations first, they won’t have the opportunity to criticize me.” Like many negative behaviors, it seems that the underlying cause is really just fear: fear of failure, fear of judgement, fear of disrespect, or fear of rejection.
While the simple solution might be to just walk away from this negativity (especially online) perhaps in our real life interactions we should try to follow Dr. Rahunathan’s advice when he states that, “…the best option for dealing with negative people is to try to understand the reasons for their negativity and show them compassion, take responsibility for your own happiness in spite of their negativity, and adopt a mature approach in dealing with the person.” While this takes a bit more effort than simply walking away, perhaps, by taking a more assertive approach to healing the negativity in others, we can also heal it in ourselves.
quietlyradical 