“English will be the only language in the world. I shouldn’t
study any other language. Why should I? Everybody will speak English and it is
enough for me”, said one of my former colleagues. Do you also think so? Forget it.
English is the main language but
not the only one. Yes, it
will be even more powerful in the future and the role of another languages will
be decreased (except Chinese) but the other main languages will remain alive. Language
is the way to see the world around us in its unique way. Language will
disappear only together with the culture which it represents. And that will
never happen – strong cultures usually successfully defend themselves. There
will be no ONE language. There will be always variety of cultures in our world.
And it is great because diversity leads to progress.
But it concerns not only national languages. There is
variety of the so-called professional languages, social languages (languages of
certain social groups), corporate jargon, argo (language which is used to
conceal the subject of communication), language of certain generations, women’s
language, men’s language, customers language, etc.
If you need to
influence people who are important to you (your target audience) it is better
to use their language. At least you should use words and concepts which they
understand.
Until I was married I had been dating with different girls. From
the very beginning I started to realize that women often speak some kind of
language which I fail to understand. Some time passed till I began to understand
that women often use hints instead of direct speech. Or it is common situation
when a woman say “don’t do it” and you do not do it and in some time follows the
dialog: “why haven’t you done it?”, “but you yourself have told me not to do it!”,
“how slow you are! You should hit upon it yourself!”. Here some more interpretation of their
language:
“What are you thinking about now?” means “say some nonsense since
pause lasts too long”
”she is so beautiful
and smart” is “tell me that I'm better”
“we need” is “I want”
“up to you” is “the
right solution is now obvious”
“Do what you want” is
“later you pay for this”
“we need to talk” is “I
need to complain”
“I'm not upset” is “of
course I'm upset, you idiot!”
“I want new curtains”
is “and carpets, and furniture, and wallpaper ...”
“hang a picture here” is “NO, I mean here!”
“I'll be ready in a minute” is “take off your shoes and look
for an interesting occupation”,
“I do not cry!” is “yes, I cry because I think it's
important!”
“Go fuck yourself!” is
“come up, hug me, kiss and soothe”.
At first it maddened me. But then I realized that they
simply see the world in another way and
it is impossible and foolish to remake them according to my world
outlook. I started to study their language and became more successful in communication
with them.
What about programmers?
How do you like such pictures when you use a software program?
First question that comes to my mind is “why do programmers hate us so much?”. Yes,
programmers have their own way of thinking and their own language. But we are
customers to them. Most of us don’t understand and don’t appreciate these mysterious
combination of symbols in pop-up windows that we can see from time to time while
using USER software. It will be much more better if they explain us in simple
words what is the problem and what should we do to fix it. So, programmers,
please speak to us in our language!
I hope you are not so cruel to other peopleJ and usually trying to
understand them and to be understood by them.
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