What did you say? Cross-cultural mix-ups!

Over the last eight years, I have lived in four different countries across three continents.  Each country having it's own unique culture and slang in speech.  I have a tendency to mimic habits and patterns very easily (but learning a new language is quite difficult for me).  I've recently realized how often I cross-reference slang and speech patterns.

For instance, in the United Kingdom, most people greet each other by asking "You alright?".  It's the equivalent of saying "How are you?" in the US.  The first time someone asked me if I was alright, I was going through the checkout at ASDA (that's the UK equivalent of Walmart).  When the checkout chick asked me if I was alright, I said "Yes", with a quizzical look on my face, "do I look sick?".  I started thinking maybe my face had gone pale or something.  It took me about a month or so to get used to being asked if I was alright, and quite a while longer before I started greeting the Britons the same way.  I really started to use it when I began working at Starbucks...then it became a full-blown habit.  In the beginning, I never really knew how to respond to that greeting because I always felt like everyone thought I was sick.  I remember one of my flatmates from university asked me how he should respond to being asked "What's up?" because they don't use that greeting in the UK, and that's how I had previously greeted people.

Although I haven't lived in the UK for about four years now, I still greet people that way because it became a habit and I haven't lived in the US long enough since then to adjust back, I suppose.  I never realized that I still use it until yesterday when I greeted one of my Korean friends that way.  My other Korean friend that I was with thought it was funny that I asked her that when I first saw her.  It got me thinking about other cultural references and habits that I've picked up along the way.

Living in Thailand, I picked up the "grunt".  I found that when Thai's are on the phone or having a conversation, if they agree with something, they make this deep-throated grunt noise.  I realized last weekend that I frequently make the grunt noise...I had to grab a taxi because of a mix-up, idiot mistake, on the subway.  The cabbie didn't speak a lick of English, and I'm one of those dickheads that's lived in Korea for a year and can only say "hi" and "Thank you" in Korean (just recently I've learned "sit down" and also figured out "yes" and "no"...getting there slowly!).  I was using Google Translate to explain where I needed to go, and when he was telling me things (in Korean) that I thought were equal to where I was needing to go, I was grunting at him.  I only realized that I did it when he mimicked my grunt and started laughing.  I realized that I grunt at people ALL the time.  I'm going to work on changing the "grunt" to saying "neh", which is "yes" in Korean.  So instead of sounding like a gorilla, I'll sound like a horse!

I always pick up other people's speech habits and tones and unconsciously mimic them.  So if you ever catch me doing it, I'm not being an asshole...it just happens.  If I grunt at you, I'm saying "yes".  If I ask you if you're alright, I'm greeting you.  It's when I don't say anything at all that you should turn and run the other way ;)

Maybe the next habit I'll pick up is the "khuu, khuu, khuu" of Orson smashing his beetles with a rock...

(^^ POINTS to you, if you get that reference! ^^)

Happy Trails!

P.S. Apologies for not having a song assigned to this blog.  I've got Patsy Cline running through my head (you can thank Kate Austin for that... < more points if you get THAT reference!)...and Patsy has nothing to do with this blog.