Disclaimer: I know I’m not very funny in other languages either.
Moving to a country with a foreign language brings all kind of challenges. Too many times have I accidentally ordered the wrong food, given a completely irrelevant and confusing answer to a question because I had misunderstood what I was asked, given way too little food because I didn’t hear the price of an item right, and countless other occasions that left me and my conversation partner utterly confused and frustrated. This isn’t even exclusive to oral misunderstandings; one time, I read a 40 page text about zapatistas and was wondering why I had to read a source about people who make shoes for my Latin American history class (zapatos = shoes). Turns out, there used to be a guy named Emiliano Zapata, who was a very important figure in the Mexican Revolution, and his followers called themselves zapatistas. I read a whole text without realising that this couldn’t possibly be about the fantastic trade of shoe-making. That’s how confused I am by Spanish.
While my Spanish has improved in my time here, it is still very, very far from perfect or fluent and I still encounter uncomfortable situations very frequently. Thanks to my own arrogance, I also exclusively have classes in Spanish (there are some that are taught in English). This leads me to the point of this blog post: I have noticed how much language influences your personality and how people perceive you.
I most strongly notice this during my lectures. Besides not being able to understand everything (or anything, as it was the case at the beginning of the semester), in my classes in England, I am usually one of the people that won’t shut up (not because I have so many smart things to say, but rather because I like to feel involved). In Colombia, I rarely (if ever) participate in class, simply because the language barrier creates too much doubt about understanding a question right and being able to express my answer in a way that doesn’t make me look like a simpleton. This takes away a large part of how I identify myself; if I am usually one of the most active people in class, and now I sit still and hope for the best when trying to understand the lecture, how much of my personality has changed? Even if I give an answer or ask a question, it will not sound very eloquent or intelligent because I am not able to express myself properly (or simply because my thoughts won’t make any sense anyway, let’s be honest).
This is also important in social situations. Being able to do small talk is extremely difficult when you’re not 100% comfortable with the language. It gets worse when the other person notices that you’re struggling with expressing yourself and tries to help by switching to English – while I know this is meant to be nice, it feels like the ultimate defeat. Hence, the title of this post: I don’t think I have ever cracked a joke in Spanish. Whether you think I am funny or not, you can’t deny that I joke a lot. To me, telling jokes is the epitome of language fluency: it shows you are able to understand the sentence structure and natural intonation of the language to the extent that you can manipulate them to be funny. Puns and sarcasm are particularly difficult. If you think my perception of the relationship between language and humour is exaggerated, try translating a joke into another language. You have to change the wording, timing, structure, and most likely, the joke won’t work. In day-to-day situations, you also have to know when a funny comment is appropriate or not, so not perfectly understanding everything around you is extremely difficult.
I am not saying that I don’t talk to anyone here in Colombia or that I present myself as the driest and most boring person ever, but I do feel like it is extra hard to express your personality if you are not fluent in the native language. I just thought it’s interesting to reflect on the connection between personality and language, as I have never considered them to be so close before. My goal here is to be able to be at least remotely funny in Spanish, so that Colombians also have the honour of enjoying my legendary humour.
Colombia Chronicles 