Before coming to South Africa I imagined that my ability to communicate with the locals would be a matter of speaking the language. As it happens, the country has 11 official languages, including English, Zulu and Afrikaans, the three one hears most often here in Kwa-Zulu Natal. But that’s not suggest I’ve been able to communicate with ease.
Communication, of course, encompasses more than language. We humans employ body language, humor and much more. “Cultural competency” is how Berlitz, the language education company, describes the so-called soft skills that one needs to be attuned to local norms. Or as Rachel, a fellow American who’s been in South Africa for nearly two years, told me over coffee recently, “You may both be speaking English but there’s still this other part to understanding.”
Most days here I stop by the Kauai smoothie bar at the Virgin Active health club where I swim. Kauai is a Hawaiian-themed chain that sells healthy snacks. Here’s an approximation my ordering a smoothie from one of the women who work behind the counter:
Server: Aloha!
Me (smiling): “Aloha, how are you?”
Server: (smiling): “I’m fine thank you, and how are you?”
Me: “Fine, thank you.”
Me: [Pause. Proceed.] “May I please have a yoga-berry smoothie, small size?”
Server: “Small yoga-berry smoothie, that will be 23 rand 90.”
Me: “Thank you very much.”
Note the pause, which can present a challenge for Americans, or at least for this New Yorker. We tend to get to business, while South Africans, in general, tend to let the greeting run its course or make small talk before transacting.
Phone calls here in South Africa unfold in a similar way. “Howz it?” you might ask someone, assuming you have license to be conversational, when he or she answers. “Good, thank you,” the caller might answer. “Howz it?” “Fine, thanks,” you might say. Then you wait. Sometimes I hear myself repeating “Fine, thanks,” which makes me sound like Rain Man but at least forces me to slow down.
Because English’s quirks can present a challenge for non-native speakers, some Americans adapt the language to compensate. My partner, an American who has lived and worked in the province for nearly 14 years, has a patter that helps her communicate with people who grew up in the Zulu or Xhosa languages.
In January my partner and I stood at South African Airways counter at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo Airport. We hoped to check a bag that contained the horns of an oryx that my partner brought back from the Namibian desert.
The ticket agent, a Zulu woman who spoke English fluently, inquired about the contents of the bag, which by its appearance could have contained a rifle.
Agent: “What do you have in the bag?”
My partner: “We were in Namibia and we only could bring small, small baggage.”
[My partner pinched together her thumb and forefinger and held them up to emphasize how tiny our bags had to be.]
My partner: “The bags had to be small, small, without wheels. We had to pack everything into them! Can you believe it? So small.”
Small, small?
I waited for the agent to repeat her question, which my partner had yet to answer. But the agent smiled and checked our bags through to Durban