When you move to live abroad, one of the main concerns is the language. Even if the person has a good speaking and writing in the new language, there are always some vocabularies and particularities of the language in each place it is spoken that you don’t know.
I am Brazilian and in Brazil they speak Portuguese there, which is very different from the one spoken in Portugal. The same happen with english in USA, Australia, UK, India and UAE; the Arabic in UAE, Egypt, KSA, Lebanon… the french of France, Canada, Congo… The languages are alive and they change in each place.
The same word could have completely different meanings. You could also need a “local” word for people understand you in that place. The accent could also be very different.
As an expat, normally you do not speak your mother language where you live. Sometimes, you can be in trouble and/or it can cause you funny situations, which you get adapted with the time. Another think that I learned is that one thing is to work in a language and another completely different is to live on that language.
The first one, I was relocated to Milan in Italy. At that time I was just married, but without kids. Both of us reached to be transferred by our companies at the same time. My husband is italian. So, for him, he was back at home. He moved to Brazil, when he was a child, but he was educated in italian school, at his family home they speak italian, he got 10 in the proficiency test. Consequently, he though the language shouldn’t be an issue for him, but he got surprised.
As our lives, the language also change during the time, but his vocabulary did not update. His colleagues, now friends, at the beginning could understand him very well, because he was completly fluent in italian, but sometimes he used old fashion expressions. It was like talking with a vocabulary of your grandmother. With the time, he updated his vocabulary and now we laugh of it.
For me, although I could understand everything in italian, but it wasn’t my first language. I was used to hear in italian, but not work on it.
I went there to work in a Legal Department of a Multinational Company, which made the language a very important topic. I was hired to do the documents in italian. Fortunately, my colleagues were amazing and they helped me a lot! One thing is the school learned language and another is the lived language!
The more I talked with my colleagues, the more I learned.
When I moved to Dubai (UAE), I was used to talk in english at my job, but the vocabulary I need to talk with the maintenance guys, or the gardener was really not the same I was used to use in meetings and legal documents.
Once I remembered that my son arrived from the nursery and asked me:
-Mum, do you like tadpole?
At that time, I had no idea what was a tadpole. Then I answered: What is it?
– It’s a baby frog, mum!
When we moved to Dubai my son didn’t speak even one word in english and, in 3 months, he was teaching me a new vocabulary.
That’s an expat life!
You will need to learn a new word everyday, your home will be a mix of languages and you will understand each other.
