Non fiction

Just nod and smile

Imagine you leave your home country, family, friends, every day routine to explore a new culture at a new university in a new country. All of a sudden people take time to understand what you want to tell them. You have to start explaining. You cannot think of words to make clear what you want. Your native language starts to mess up your second language, and the other way around; people answer to something you did not ask for, only because you cannot find the right words to express yourself.

New situations ask for creative ways of handling them.

If someone starts talking to you in a slight variety of the second language you are to use for the next few months you feel the urgent pressure to have to understand them – it's only a variety of a language, not a different language! What would be so difficult about, say, Scottish? If you do not understand what somebody is talking to you about, how are you supposed to get through the time coming? How are you supposed to get into contact with other people, to express your wishes, to notice what is going on around you?

New situations ask for creative ways of handling them.

The easiest and most responsive of which is to nod and smile, chap – just nod and smile.

Anna Terbrüggen