I love our funny English phrases that mean something quite different from just the literal words. I love them because they are so bizarre – but they can hinder effective communication if the receiver doesn’t understand the code.
I recently sent a message to a girlfriend, saying, “It’s been a bit hairy”.
My friend Daphne is 90 years old, indigenous English and I knew she would understand immediately what I meant.
This means: it’s been very frightening, very upsetting and very overwhelming.
I tested ‘it’s been a bit hairy’ out on another friend called Jenny again indigenous English in her 70’s, she used even more catastrophic words to translate!
I think this is part of the misunderstanding when some people still say, oh the English don’t say what they mean – we do!
But just like any language, there is a code. And if you speak the language as an indigenous person, you speak the code.
Effective Communication in Any Language
I remember an Italian boyfriend who was rather gallant, a very talented animation artist and director and quite dramatic. He was expressive and one day handed me something saying ” I give you a beautiful thing”.
How romantic I thought, how lovely, how very charming… and I thought he was speaking this deliciously romantic phrase to me, just to me, because of how he felt about me.
Years later, I had a super bright, very cool, unemotional Mergers and Acquisition Investment Banker living with me as a lodger, she too was Italian.
One day, in the kitchen, she passed me something quite ordinary and said, ‘I give you a beautiful thing”.
The handsome Italian boyfriend had long since disappeared into the previous chapters of my life, but here again was this delightful saying. And that’s the point. It was just an Italian phrase said in literal translation in English.
Nothing to do with Valaria’s feelings for me (she wasn’t gay) or to do with romance or even a beautiful object.
Back to being hairy 🙂
The point is, had Pino (male Italian) been speaking to Valaria, they would have understood each other completely, neither thinking they were being overly romantic.
Pino wasn’t lying to me or making himself out to be more romantic than he really was – likewise English people aren’t being false if they say – ‘it was quite tricky’ meaning it was an absolute disaster.
Effective Communication in A Language That Has Been Simplified For Ease of Access
It’s easy to forget, that because nearly all English verbs can be reduced to ‘get’ or ‘got’ a lot of people can speak some passable English without any understanding of the nuances of the words and phrases used by the original small indigenous native speaking population.
According to my new best friend ‘Alexa’, there are 1.45 billion English speakers in the world.
That’s a lot of people to criticise the indigenous nuances of native United Kingdom English speakers!
The language is spoken everywhere: but there is only a small group of small islands called the United Kingdom, that speak the language with an intrinsic, indigenous understanding.
I suspect if 1.4 billion people spoke Japanese, people would complain the indigenous Japanese people said things they didn’t mean.
In every language I suspect strongly there are many commonly used sayings, that are not literal at all.
Let’s consider a long standing adapted and modified version of English – American English. They say things like, let’s smash it.
I personally find that quite aggressive, but what they actually mean is that they want to complete the task well!
Another curious English phrase is, keep your eyes peeled.
Isn’t that hideous? Makes me squirm just thinking about vegetable peelers and eyes – ugh!
Or – keep your eyes on the road!
I remember hearing a father explaining that he had to be really careful what he said to his little boy who had Asperger’s, as one day he caught his son kneeling down on the pavement leaning over and pressing his head on the tarmac of the road, as he desperately tried to put his eye ball onto the road…
Effective Communication For The Hard of Hearing
My mother is extremely deaf. As a result, I have become extremely keen on asking her what she has just heard. It is rarely the same collection of words I have just said and so invariable the sentiments she thinks I have just expressed are NOT the same as my intent.
This leads to a lot of miscommunication.
Neither of us are lying but the meaning is lost in translation.
She is working through the fog of deafness and I don’t know which sounds have been picked up by her electronic hearing aids – or not.
I have taken to asking her questions like, “Mummy, what have you actually heard?
Or, “What did you think I said?”
Her answers are sometimes the opposite of what I said – and this highlights the importance of t’s or d’s to perhaps emphasise negatives or the past tense of a verb: eg can and can’t and worked and work.
I find asking what the other person thinks I have meant, really helpful to ensure a good understanding between us and leads to a happier and more efficient communication.
Clarification for good communication is essential and I recommend this method of checking in with the other person.
Effective Communication Despite Literal Translations
I recently taught a young Russian actress a speech from a play by Turgenev (a Russian playwright) which had been translated into English.
The translation was by a respected Oxford University professor and had been published by a respected academic books publisher.
The character had this strange line about a spider. In the middle of a speech talking about how she had loved this other character and how her stepmother and guardian had been in love with him and so had tried to marry her off to an old man, she talked about a spider!
It seemed quite random and made no sense at all.
I asked the Russian girl to translate the spider sentence into Russian.
‘Does this make any sense to you in Russian?’ I asked, quite perplexed.
“Oh yes” she said, “it’s a saying we have, but it’s meaning is nothing to do with spiders”.
And there you have it!
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So I believe for effective communication you really do need to factor in what language is the person’s first language, whether they are deaf, in which country they have grown up etc.
And to be absolutely safe, check in with your listener if possible, what they perceive you have just said.
Obviously for a large audience and perhaps a diverse group of folks from different countries and cultures, keep the language simple.
If effective communication is your wish, rather than showing off your extensive vocabulary, knowledge of metaphors and ability to join clauses, use shortish sentences and simple words where possible.
And trust me – we English do say what we mean!
© Rachel Preece 2024. This material may not be copied or plagiarised without the written consent of the author and must always be attributed to Rachel Preece