Navigating the Language Barrier

What is a language barrier?

Unless you have always felt super confident in your Japanese or have reached a high level of fluency before coming to Japan, you’ve probably felt the challenges of navigating a language barrier.

Merriam-Webster defines a language barrier as: “a difficulty for people communicating because they speak different languages”.

It sounds straightforward, but language barriers can often be more subtle than we realize. A language barrier can be anything from misunderstanding the other person to speaking up less because you feel unsure if you will be able to properly express yourself in another language.

How our behavior changes in different languages

Sometimes without even realizing it, at some point I realized that I talked a lot less when around my Japanese colleagues than I would in an English-speaking environment. There is a phenomenon where people’s personalities can change in different language and cultural settings. Though I had heard of it before, it still came as a surprise when I found it affecting me as well.

It can feel like I’m a different person when I speak English and when I speak (my limited) Japanese. It’s hard to feel like we cannot express or communicate ourselves in the way we are used to doing back home. My library of words and grammar structures to pull from feel so much more restricted in Japanese. But I wondered if this language technicality was the only reason why.

“Cultural accommodation,” A Sign of Cultural Awareness

Research on bilingual speakers and people who speak a foreign language (though perhaps not fluently) shows that this phenomenon of acting differently across different languages is quite common. The explanation behind this phenomenon is known as the “cultural accommodation hypothesis”.

This hypothesis shows that it’s not about a true or false self. People who speak multiple languages are no less authentically themselves and have split personalities. Rather, the cultural accommodation hypothesis claims that “they change their behavioural, cognitive and emotional response according to the cultural norms primed by the language they’re using in a specific moment.” – (Do you feel like a different person when you speak a foreign language? Here is why!)

Being “culturally accommodating” might feel like you’re losing your true self, changing who you are to fit the norms of where you are. Like me, you might be wondering about how different you act sometimes, such as ‘why am I so much less outspoken or directly communicative in Japanese?’

Actually, though, this feeling can also be a sign of emotional intelligence and openness to new experiences. One study found that people who reported ‘feeling different’ in a foreign language had correlated personality traits of extraversion, friendliness, cooperativeness, and openness to new experiences. By being receptive and sensitive to cultural norms and ways of communicating in another language, you are becoming more culturally aware and most likely growing your ability to be flexible in different situations as a result!

TLDR, Keep trying 🙂

While knowing all this doesn’t make any of the grammar or new vocabulary easier to learn, hopefully it offers some comfort that the language barrier is real. It’s normal for how you act to shift across languages and that likely has an effect on your relationships as well. But that’s okay! In fact, that’s the cool thing about languages and how they offer different ways for us to express ourselves.

The important thing is to try to connect anyways – even if we make mistakes or the conversation doesn’t go as deep as we think it should in order for it to be meaningful. Embracing the idea that your connections may look different in another language can help take the pressure off and make it easier to take that first step.

Even a comment about the weather might mean more than you think! It might be a way for someone to say, ‘Hey, I see you. You’re part of this community. I want you to feel more welcome, so I will make a comment to you about the weather.’ Communication and relationships take time to build. It might not be perfect, but it’s a starting point!

Sources and Additional Resources:

- Do you feel like a different person when you speak a foreign language? Here is why!

- Change of Language, Change of Personality?

- Hej, hello, hola: Does your personality change when you speak another language?

- From National AJET’s Resource page on Mental Health:
  - - Gesture language: embrace it!
  - - Be persistent
  - - If you don’t accept one invitation and you don’t get asked again, then make your own invitation, even something simple like coffee, or the movies.
  - - Don’t worry if you make mistakes when speaking Japanese, everyone does and it just shows you’re making a real effort.