No, Most of You Would Not Last Six Months Living Abroad - Part 2
You will be corrected often after you become fluent and trusted…Like several million kids in my Gen X cohort, I grew up listening to Curious George at bedtime. Not once did I find it odd that I admired a smiley monkey who stole, broke, and vandalized things….all for the sake of public art. (The floating newspaper boat parade was pure genius).
George was excessively curious, and it generally got him in trouble on a routine basis.
Curious George is a very American archetype of the rule-breaking entrepreneur, artist, and activist with a ‘good’ objective. His curiosity gets the better of him, but he is forgiven. And, so, the curiosity gets rewarded. Most kids identify with the rebel side of George very quickly, partly because they wish they could break all of Mom and Dad’s annoying rules, too. [Kids also like rebels because kids are society’s most disempowered age group].
I fear that more kids take away the American rebel theme from this iconic series than the theme of unwavering curiosity.
And it is curiosity that ultimately determines how well you adapt long-term to a foreign culture. Not IQ. Not money. Not even language fluency. Language, after all, is just a tool. It takes curiosity to suffer through the language learning process.
In last week’s piece, I discussed how learning a country’s native language is critical to building normal, high-trust relationships with local people. Without some fluency, you can not enter local social networks (except through marriage) because they will never fully trust you. In many cultures, lack of fluency will mark you as “stupid,” even if you appear well off. This is very true in the U.S.
However, gaining access to social networks through fluency is one thing. Once you gain access to proper relationship formation (i.e., friendships), the awkwardness and complexity of crossing a cultural boundary ratchet way up.
Things get more challenging for you, not easier.
The first nine months I lived in Tamil Nadu in 1997, I was in an American-backed language institute, where we spoke too much English during class, ate breakfast and lunch with Americans, and you get the picture—too much of an expat bubble. Most students did not intend to become orally fluent (they often intended to study Asian literature or history).
As I mentioned in last week’s piece, it took me over a year of hanging out on the streets at night to develop my conversational fluency. It sucked speaking Tamil like a drunk, stammering four-year-old at first. But I persisted, staring at the long-term objective of social access in front of me. And the language fascinated me, honestly. It makes your brain think differently. Speaking Tamil will change your personality.
After nine months at the American Institute for Indian Studies, I returned to the U.S. to obtain my research visa and then flew back to begin fieldwork.
After returning to Tamil Nadu, I was totally alone, renting a house inside a local suburb with no other foreigners. No more daily temptation to speak English. No more expat lunches. And, in six months, I became really depressed. My atypical neurology aside, part of the issue that confronted me (and anyone else who gets to this point living abroad with fluency) is that local people are now criticizing and correcting you as a local and at a furious pace. And yet your relationship with them is not super deep yet either. But much deeper than any tourist will experience.
Part of you will want to scream, “For crying out loud, I just got here!!!”
And, because you are linguistically competent but still culturally incompetent, you will be getting quite an earful. There is no real way to avoid this transitional awkwardness as an immigrant. And, ironically, your admirable fluency is what has earned you this ‘prize.’ More trust in you means locals now evaluate your behavior as if you were a local, not a silly tourist (i.e., a walking bank account from whom to extract the maximal amount of cash).
This period of maximal awkwardness is when your intrinsic level of human curiosity will either save you or send you rushing to the nearest international departures lounge. This happens even to graduated students.
Here’s one example of where something fundamental gets screwed up by Americans all the time where I lived in India.
The Art of Saying Goodbye in Tamil CultureI want to use a straightforward human behavior to illustrate how living abroad is about more than language fluency. It is about understanding more subtle codes and values. These codes are the beating heart of human cultures, if the concept has any analytical value.
Tamil speakers use a verb compound, a phrase, to say “goodbye” to each other. They do not use the dictionary translation for the English word “goodbye.”1
“வரேன்.”
It literally means - “I’m coming.” It is only one word, because spoken Tamil uses verb endings to indicate the subject, so pronouns are optional. Very efficient.
And this word is short for the “schoolyard” Tamil version of goodbye which I often used-
“போயிட்டு வரேன்.”
Denotatively, this formal phrase translates as “I’m going and coming.”
If you’re confused, welcome to Tamil Nadu, where people ensure you know they are “returning” as they depart your presence.
Why is THIS so polite in Tamil culture? It signals that the relationship between you and your audience is highly valued. They value it, so they want to signal their return, i.e., this relationship continues. Leaving a conversation at a coffee stall or someone’s home requires you to validate the status of the relationship at a minimal level. That’s how important relationships are in Tamil culture.
If you ever say something Americans routinely say, “I’m going now,” or if you think “goodbye” and say the Tamil verb for “I’m going” as a substitute (very common mistake), you’re not signaling what you think you are.
“I’m going” in Tamil is an utterance that breaks a relationship. It is the language of estrangement. It is incredibly disrespectful if you use it with a parent or other family elder. It is a verbal slap.
Instead, Tamils saying goodbye to a friend or loved one or respect person, always say “I’m coming.” It means - “I’m coming back for sure. We’ll talk again soon.” But it does this in two phonemes using one present tense verb.
This level of linguistic efficiency and deep coding is shared only among classical world languages, most of them being Asian languages, born of cultures accustomed to incredibly nuanced relationship management and advanced social skills. You will not find it in English, but someone is welcome to challenge me here.
From a Tamil point of view, American English speakers saying “goodbye” routinely dishonor their closest relationships with sloppy language. That’s because we rely on a departing hug, a gesture, to really indicate the relationship’s value. And not always.
Does it matter if you use language or gesture to validate a relationship that matters to you?
Yes. I’m going to say it does in human cultures. Because disrespectful language is rarely forgotten when deployed. Saying “I’m going” is just rude in Tamil culture in a way it is not in American English. 2
No one in Tamil Nadu will forget someone who says the following to them, often in a disgusted tone,
Rough translation: “What kind of person are you (disrespectful form) My God! You useless fool. I’m outta here.” Notice how many fewer phonemes it takes (in my recording) than in English to tell someone to ‘fuck off’ without swearing.
An American hug can be perfunctory. Who knows what it means?
But telling your friend “I’m going” won’t be ambiguous to her. Nope.
Why Curiosity Matters in Adapting to Foreign CulturesYour reaction to being corrected for a social faux should be, “Wow. That’s fascinating. I won’t do that again, sure.” You must treat the local culture like a dynamic puzzle you need to decode. Then, your curiosity accelerates your learning because mistakes become a positive learning process.
If you see faux pas abroad as humiliating, annoying, and frustrating, you won’t be staying very long. Your inner “George” is probably dead. You simply do not have the muscle to adapt. Even if you are fluent, you may still leave.
Most who try to live abroad fail to meet this crucial curiosity test, in my experience. Whatever curiosity they have is not enough to withstand being culturally incompetent like a child—the constant corrections.
You have to be comfortable with a lot of awkwardness. A lot.
1This word is highly formal and I only heard it used at bureaucratic functions by VIPs.
2The one vestige of this kind of relationship emphasis in English is found in using informal phrases like “bye” or “see you soon” instead of “goodbye.” The latter is pretty formal and dose signal the relationship is either formal/hierarchical or just plain weak.
