Euroasia: Language, Culture and Travel

For those who haven’t heard, I’ve been nominated for one of the “Ponsonby Top 10 Entrepreneurs” awards under the Business Services category.

I received over a hundred messages from friends, family, colleagues, clients, suppliers etc expressing support, and right now we’re in the final leg of the 2-month voting process. So for good measure, I figured I should get all my friends who haven’t voted for me to do so. The closing date is Friday, 6 June.

So here I am shamelessly asking for votes again

Feel free to vote online here:

http://www.ponsonbynews.co.nz/voting_form.php

It wouldn’t hurt if you ask your friends to vote as well

Will let you all know how it goes when I find out.

Breaking news… we’re moving in July! Check out the latest updates and photos here.

Wednesday, 28 May 2008, 8:00 am
Press Release: Euroasia

Euroasia, New Zealand’s leading private provider of foreign language courses and cross-cultural consulting services, is planning a move. Euroasia announced on Tuesday that the company intends to expand capacity and serve its clients better by moving its head office and Auckland operation to significantly larger premises at 10 Titoki Street, Parnell, in July 2008. The new location at the Auckland Domain is very central, and easily accessible by clients from all over Auckland.

Euroasia currently operates nationwide, with face-to-face classes held in Auckland and Christchurch. The Auckland head office is currently located at 100 Franklin Road, Ponsonby. The new premises in Parnell incorporate a heritage building with 13 classrooms looking out to the Auckland Museum, and will be shared with global education provider, Kaplan Aspect. Classrooms are well-appointed and spacious, and clients will have access to an attractive garden and outdoor terrace. There is also greater scope for social functions and networking.

“Euroasia is committed to providing a wide range of top-quality foreign language courses to New Zealanders, and this move will enhance our ability to do so,” said Euroasia Director, Kenneth Leong. “Moving from 6 classrooms to 13 increases our potential capacity to 700 students, and will enable us to offer a greater range of services in Auckland.”

Euroasia is aggressively pursuing growth opportunities as other providers scale back operations. “This is the ideal time for us to be gaining market share as New Zealanders’ interest in foreign languages and cultures heightens,” said Mr. Leong. “We are seeing more New Zealanders travel and do business overseas; this is translating into unprecendented levels of business for Euroasia”.

Euroasia is assisting a number of state schools with their second language programmes, as well as continuing to advise a number of businesses and government agencies on their language, culture and translation requirements.

Euroasia’s foreign language classes have been attended by over 2,500 New Zealanders in the past 5 years, with over 400 enrolments so far this year. Euroasia courses in Auckland and Christchurch are available through evening classes, in-company tuition or online learning. Also offered to businesses is cross-cultural consulting – working through the issues raised by dealing with people from different cultural backgrounds.

Further information on Euroasia and the planned move can be found at http://www.euroasia.co.nz or by calling 0800 EUROASIA (0800 387627).

ENDS

I realised that one sure-fire way of generating traffic to one’s blog is to talk about relationships. Cross-cultural relationships is certainly a hot topic. In fact some random Russian blog picked up my previous post and translated my points into Russian. Pity I can’t read Russian, but using Google translator, I figured this was the case.

Still on the topic of building cross-cultural relationships, some people are of the opinion that social groups that are prejudiced towards each other only need mix together in order to reduce this prejudice. I hear this all the time. And this logic drives a lot of official initiatives to promote opportunities for different cultural groups to mix together.

It would be great if it were that simple, but unfortunately contact is not enough.

It is necessary that both groups have equal status, have personal interaction, engage in cooperative activities to achieve collective goals, and it should be considered the norm for the groups to interact.

Source: Aronson, E., Blaney, N., Stephan, C., Sikes, J., & Snapp, M. (1978). The jigsaw classroom. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

This winter, you can witness the power of the collective vision by simply visiting a local sports bar on a night when the All Blacks plays Australia. When the All Blacks wins the game everyone is congratulating and hugging one another. I’ve witnessed this scene numerous times at different places.

It’s one of those rare occasions where no one cares what your colour, creed or race is.  All that matters is that you’re wearing black.

It is a truism to state that, as companies wishing to operate successfully in the global economy, we need a global perspective. What is perhaps less widely appreciated is that a key part of that perspective is a real understanding of the people we are working with. We have to see our partners, our staff, in the way they would like us to see them, namely, as rich and complex human beings, who are at once individuals, but at the same time moulded in the light of the culture in which they grew up.

In today’s world, we probably come into contact with people from different cultural backgrounds almost every day. We perceive similarities: we are all human beings. We also perceive differences. But what do we make of those differences? We can, if we choose, see them as a problem, even as alienating; we can pretend they don’t exist; we can treat everyone as if they would really like to be just like us, if only we gave them the chance. Or we can see these differences as fascinating, enriching, real but not off-putting, a key component of who people are and would wish themselves to be; and then, in the process, we also begin to understand a little more about ourselves.

If we take the positive line, we are half-way towards making a success of cross-cultural relationships, business and personal. Where we come in as cross-cultural consultants is in filling in the other half, in offering you a shortcut to specific information and skills which could otherwise take years to acquire.

I came across a brilliant ad the other day. Depicting the story of a young Chinese boy, Tan Hong Ming, in love with a Malay girl. This got me thinking about writing an entry about cross-cultural relationships.

I have a number of friends involved in a relationship with someone of a different culture. This is becoming increasingly common in Auckland, where 1 in 4 residents was born overseas. There are many reasons why people choose to go out with someone of a different culture. When I’m in my “un-PC” mode, I start asking friends how they feel about going out with someone from a different cultural background. I’m curious. I sometimes wonder how people talk with one another if they have significant language barriers. A relationship with someone who speaks the same language is challenging enough, let alone one with someone who doesn’t. As it is, there are already two major languages one would have to learn in a relationship. The language of the other gender (yes means no, no means maybe, maybe means yes etc) and the love language (service, words, gifts, touch, time) of your partner.

Coupled with the cultural and linguistic differences, I can imagine it would be pretty difficult. I’ve never gone out with a girl who’s not Chinese, so I can’t speak from personal experience.

At one point, every one of my colleagues at work had a Kiwi partner (some of you know that Euroasia staff tend to be foreign-born because of the business we’re in). So periodically we get talking about how this came to be. I’ve also dealt with clients who would go to great lengths to learn the language of their partner. (Banana in a Nutshell is my recommended film on this topic).

Now that I’ve justified my lack of formal qualifications in sociology/psychology , let me share some personal observations on this matter:

• Asian girls are more likely to go out with Kiwi guys than the other way round. Of 10 Asian-Kiwi relationships I see, probably 9 would be Asian girl-Kiwi guy;
• Continental European girls are also more likely to go out with Kiwi guys than the other way round; but less so than Asian girls;
• Kiwi girls say they prefer foreign-born men because they tend to be more sophisticated, gentlemanly, understanding, romantic, ambitious etc;
• Kiwi guys say they prefer foreign-born girls because they tend to be more feminine, demure (Asian), self-aware (European), respectful, easy to please;
• Asian + European girls say they prefer Kiwi guys because they are less chauvinistic, easygoing, adventurous and treat girls well;
• I’ve had few discussions with Asian guys with Kiwi partners, so can’t say for sure what they think;
• Despite the many complaints I hear from foreign-born girls about Kiwi guys being sloppy and carefree, these foreign-born girls have also chosen to be with a Kiwi guy!
• Girls outnumber guys in New Zealand, especially in the major cities Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Kiwi guys going for foreign girls don’t help! (not that government can regulate this)
• The people involved in cross-cultural relationships come from all walks of life, they are not necessarily the most liberal or widely-travelled, contrary to popular belief.

Lest I be accused of perpetuating stereotypes and advancing ethnocentrism, let me say ultimately, every one of us is unique, and I’ve met many people who do not fit the stereotype.

My conclusion thus far? Love is colour blind

What are your thoughts?

What does it mean to say that you “speak a language”? That you speak like a native, that you speak fluently, that you can to some extent get by? There are many different interpretations of what this phrase could mean.

Over the years, I’ve had a go at learning quite a few languages. I started off at school with French and German (with Latin thrown in for good measure), and I then went off to university and studied these further. Somewhere along the line, I got some teach-yourself books and duly taught myself some Italian and Spanish. A period spent in Wales prompted me to tackle Welsh. Later on, I had a go at Russian, Dutch and finally Japanese. Whereupon I decided enough was enough, so, no, I have no intention of learning Zulu or Icelandic.

I have sometimes been asked how many languages I speak, and I really have no idea how to answer this question. The reason is that I have achieved greatly varying degrees of proficiency in these various languages. My French and German are reasonably competent, but I am definitely not a native speaker, and if I were to write this article in either of those languages, I would take a lot longer and still want a native speaker to check it through. At the other end of the scale, I can’t say very much at all in Russian, but I still have a certain feel for the language.

The point, perhaps, is not so much how many languages I speak, but what do I know of these languages, and what use is what I know.

When we start learning a foreign language, we would of course love to reach a high level of competence in a short period. However, there is no getting away from the fact that there is a lot involved in language learning; even if you have a gift for grammar, and an intuitive feel for the way languages work, you still have to memorise vocabulary, and that takes time. Not everyone can devote years to the study of a foreign language and so, realistically, not everyone who tries it will achieve a high level of competence.

I’d like to go back to my own experience and compare my rudimentary knowledge of Japanese with my non-existent knowledge of, say, Korean.

I can’t say very much in Japanese, I can’t really follow a conversation, and I certainly can’t read a newspaper. However, I do have a feel for the way the language works. I know the sound patterns, and how these are put together to make words. I can easily identify nouns and verbs. I know something about levels of politeness, and how these important aspects of Japanese culture are reflected in the language. On the purely practical level, if I go to Japan, I know enough to get myself around without support. Most important of all, if I meet Japanese people, I can say something in their language, and show them that I have made the effort to match in some small way the effort they have probably made to learn my language.

In Korean, I can’t do any of this: to me the language is just a jumble of sounds, I have no idea what people are talking about, and if I go to Korea I have to really on support from others, sign language, or the classic “Does anyone here speak English?”

The level of knowledge I have achieved in Japanese is probably on a par with what people might hope to achieve after one or two courses with Euroasia. I am certainly not fluent in the language, and yet the knowledge I have is knowledge I really appreciate having: it’s of practical use, it helps me to relate to people, plus it contributes to my general understanding of the world around me.

And this, I would say, is the value of learning a little.

Not an issue you normally think about, is it? From LA to NY, it’s all pretty much the same, and not vastly different from ours!

This is certainly true – to a degree. But one thing I discovered on a recent trip is this: outside the main tourist spots, a lot of people are totally unfamiliar with varieties of English other than the range on offer within the United States. When people in small communities in Utah were suddenly confronted by a question asked in my strange dialect, there was often a moment when they looked as though they’d been confronted by some alien who’d just landed, as aliens always do, in the desert down the road. Even after that initial moment had passed, there was still often a longer period of incomprehension, and I was sometimes obliged to translate what I said into something more familiar to American ears (I know they call the toilet the “restroom”, but you’d think they’d at least recognise other ways of saying it…)

And this was just the native speakers! The USA is now home to more than 40,000,000 people with Spanish as their first language; there will soon be more Spanish speakers in the USA than there are in Spain. Although most of these people also speak English to varying degrees, they are even less familiar with non-American varieties of English than the Anglos. When I told the Hispanic car hire guy that I wanted the car until “the seventh of May”, he didn’t get it until I managed to come up with “May seven”!

When it comes to potential for linguistic crises, the USA may not be the most worrying of destinations, but there is in any case an easy way round some of the problems: when the people you are speaking to are obviously Hispanic… just speak Spanish! Not only will you be understood much more readily, but you will instantly win new friends. Just a few cheerful words in Spanish can set you apart from the majority who don’t really want to know, and it’s almost guaranteed that a little conversation will follow on.

The USA is a great place in which to practise your Spanish. You can watch Spanish-speaking TV wherever you go, and even be amused by their version of Desperate Housewives (“Amas de casa desesperadas”) if you’re finding the original is getting just too improbable for words. Pick up a Spanish newspaper to catch the Hispanic line on Hillary Clinton. Read the bilingual notices that you see around the place. When speaking, you do also have a safety net, in that if you do get stuck, the chances are that your English, however strange its tones, will be generally understood as well!

Buen viaje, amigos, en los Estados Unidos…

My colleagues and I are often asked the question “Which language should I learn?”

This is perhaps one of the hardest questions to answer. So much depends on purpose, interests, prior experience and even mundane things like course availability and teacher-student rapport.

The correct answer is this one:

Many people will have a particular reason for learning a certain language. If you just have a desire to experience foreign language learning, it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. Which country or culture interests you?

BUT that’s not the answer that people want to hear. So the marketer in me often tries to understand in more subtle ways which language the potential client already has in mind. Often people already have an idea but are uncertain of whether their choice makes sense.

I often tell the story of how I figured out what people want from a language course. One day I fielded an enquiry from a young lady interested in learning French. We got talking about why she wanted to learn French. The more we talked, the more realised that she wasn’t there simply because she wanted a language course. She told me how she wished to be fluent enough in order to watch Amélie without subtitles.

It dawned on me for the first time 3 or so years ago that the real reason many people wish to learn a language like French is because of the romance associated with it. This is sometimes subconscious, and often other more apparent and easy-to-explain reasons (like desire to travel, personal interest) come to mind.

In any case, for the benefit of readers who want to know the “logical reasons” why one should learn a particular language, feel free to visit our dedicated pages on this topic:

Why learn Spanish?

Why learn French?

Why learn German?

Why learn Italian?

Why learn Chinese?

Why learn Japanese?

Why learn Korean?

So in future If you’re asked at a social function why you’re learning a certain language, just say that you’ve decided that you’ll do one thing this year that pushes you outside your comfort zone. It’s OK. You’re not the only one in that category. People may laugh at you, but secretly they admire your tenacity and resolve. Or just say that you feel it’s the romantic thing to do. Girls love that.