00:11
Okay, so let's let's see.
There were a lot of there were a lot of points there.
I only wrote down one of them, but what I wanted to say is that
you brought up the idea of the listener.
So the sort of expectation.
So if if the listener is like listening to you is trying to
understand what you're saying then the situations that you
expressed are true, right?
You don't have to have like the best pitch or the best stresses
or the best intonation or the best doesn't matter, right?
Now with that being said what came to me was a question not
even a question the awareness of how people perceive a listener.
And so my first thought was in that case, that's a trusted
listener, right? Not like emotionally trusted, right?
But I trust the listener to be active in receiving my message.
I trust them to be there and listening.
Yeah, which is not always true, but neither is the second
version of that which is the assumed malicious listener or
the simply what's the what's the neutral word for this that
I'm looking for lack of caring indifferent indifferent indifferent.
Yeah, right and so in either of those cases you're running
up against the possibility that either the listener is not
going to understand which in some cases you have no control
over but maybe their barrier to understanding is also going
to be higher.
So any little things you do that seem off are just going
to like run into a brick wall, right?
Right like the your error margin is suddenly a lot smaller.
Yes, depending on the listeners attitude right and right
their state at the minute.
Okay, and so that I think that's the two situations and
so one of the ways that I think any language learner maybe
even if their primary language right at the younger ages,
but the language learner piece I can imagine somebody saying
not saying but perhaps where the concern comes from is
that they're assuming either a well, they're assuming
an indifferent or malicious listener not a trusted listener.
And so there's a sort of an inward facing.
I can't do anything about this person.
There are two ways to do this.
You can either do something about the person which is external
or you could do something about you and that's the internal.
So if the internal one is get anxious learn more practice
03:01
how to have proper pitch then execute and if I'm still
not understood it's my fault.
So do it again or you know cycle of shame until you suddenly
can't speak in that particular moment just a that would
be the framing I see of that versus the trusted one where
like I swing between these two where sometimes I'll go
to a thing and just be like I'm just going to believe
that these people will be trying their best to understand
me if I flounder if I cannot speak if I cannot communicate
it as clearly as I want then I will go back to basics
and just do what I need to do and in that case it usually
works right I was able to handle a pension office thing
today in Japanese only because that was the only way that
They had and I don't know nearly enough to be able to execute
that with any level of certainty, but I knew enough and I
could also kind of figure things out as it went and I could
ensure that I was pointing at the right thing.
So that's trusted but it doesn't work in those ways.
So that was what I wanted to bring up the idea of the listener
and maybe how the person trying to speak frames the listener
could make that difference.
Yeah, yeah.
No true and honestly the reality is that it's neither very
trustworthy nor completely malicious intent of trying to
you know, pick apart every little thing.
It's it's somewhere in between where people are like depending
on their background.
Yeah, they just are more used to hearing your accented
whatever language or some people are just much better at
reading body languages or like, you know, very true cues in
a situational way and some people suck at reading these cues
and there's very little thing they can do about it speaking
of body languages though.
I have a funny story.
Like I always thought it was really funny how so my mother
despite living abroad the same amount of years as I have and
my sister have of course having a been abroad as an adult
sure struggles fair amount in English.
However, she managed to enroll two of us my sister and I into
a school compare different school system, right?
My dad is too busy settling into his work life in this new
city and like left all of my you know kids affairs to my mom
who needs, you know, an electronic dictionary on her hand
and everything somehow figured out.
Oh, this is the deadline that cannot be missed or like this
is the deadline that can be negotiated or oh this school looks
06:03
like it's better for one of them but not the other or like,
you know things like that like she managed to figure that
out on her own and super impressive like I only
started to respect that after many many years after the
English showcase because when we were all thrown into this
English environment.
Like my sister and I on top of being a teenager had to figure
out this whole, you know, new environment thing new school
thing and like never ever worried that my parents could be
struggling too.
Yeah, I mean you're a kid.
It's not your job to worry about the parents at that moment.
And it's only afterwards.
I'm like, huh, how did the first step happen?
Like how did we manage to show up at the school where they
were expecting us and like, yes, you were the new student.
Hello, you know, how did that happen when my mom can barely
make a restaurant reservation, but I found out what she is
good at is this reading of body language thing.
Okay.
Yeah.
So when is she's on phone?
She has a hard time making reservation appointments, whatever
but if she is in at the post office complaining to the guy
that she should receive this package.
She can make her point across.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah, and she can and she's like no this package should not
cost $200 see I read it here.
It says $50 and like nice like things like that.
She can do and and I think she's just one of those people
who's really really tuned into this atmospheric body language
language that sometimes speaks louder than how well she can
articulate herself people know that this lady is not to be
messed with and she wants something and she knows it and
now we know it and we better make that happen.
Like I think it's just so funny that you know, she's not she's
not this like super boisterous woman either.
She's just like very normal soft-speaking person when she knows
that she is the last person who can make that happen or like
when she when when no one else is available frankly to make
that happen.
Yeah, I think I think she she managed to do that by sheer reading
between the line and like just like I yeah, I mean, that's
the only way I can explain how she managed to you know, sign
us up for like health insurance and all the new schools rule
09:00
and like PTAs and what not like how the hell she I have no
clue that type of I mean that's amazing and I and I totally
can see it.
So first like the number of things right as an adult trying
to take care of kids trying to do, you know their own things
as well, you know you you end up benefiting if you are a person
who can say I am entering a space.
I know what my tools are and I know what my limits are.
I'm going to use them and it sounds like your mom definitely
did that right which is which is fantastic and certainly was
helpful for for both you and your sister.
Yeah, and I do I can support it from my end because I don't
know if I would say, you know, the you know, the vision of
people that are like they just have this great idea of the
room.
I don't know if I would give myself all of that but I would
give myself some of that and the sum of that is me walking
in and knowing how to put my body language in a way that
is, you know, I'm just trying to figure out what's going
on.
I'm not really a hundred percent sure I'm doing my best
to like listen in and sort of like nodding you'll see the
eyes sort of shut and squint a little bit and sort of you
know, you know sort of like slow paced like the thinking
which is which is a not always a trick, but it's a bit of
a trick to give me time to settle the thinking which I do
in English as well.
So this is mine and then I'm watching them and seeing if
they're still favorably like trying to kind of help me or
if something has triggered and now they're like, you know,
really confused and I'm like, right because in that in that
customer service type setup also like they don't owe you to
like serve you per se, you know, they can do whatever they
want but like you can change your attitude in such a way
that makes them want to help you.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, you can maybe speak softly or maybe you can like really
use your body language articulate as much as you can and tell
them how hard you're trying so that they would like, okay,
this guy is trying really hard.
Like let me try and receive to my maximum capacity what he's
trying to say right and as opposed to like with the same level
of fluency in Japanese if you just walking and like here all
my papers are here go figure, you know, like yeah, or you
like, you know blurt out really fast English lines, you know,
try to intimidate them or something then like they are less
likely to help you and yeah, I mean definitely some cultural
12:04
sort of norm and variation exist here.
Yes, and I inclined to say that the Japanese customer service
people generally want to help you as opposed to other countries
people necessarily.
Yes, sorry.
Anyway, but like yeah, so it helps that that's the setup, right?
But like still I think you you slow down you like were, you
know, humble with what you didn't know and what you didn't
know and didn't try to intimidate your way out of this and yeah,
like that helps.
Yep, right.
I think I think you just sort of nailed it with you started
capturing a few of the pieces that are helpful across the board.
There are there are maybe places where trying to slow down and
trying to I can think of a few trying to slow down trying to
show that you're thinking doesn't come across in the same way,
right?
You can think about it in terms of even the what is it the
America's joke about like the Westerners versus the the Easterners
in the States, right?
East Coast, West Coast attitude like the sort of West Coast will
oh, that's so bad that your tire popped and oh man, that must
be so hard and I got well, good luck with the rest of your day.
Goodbye and then sort of like leave whereas on this is a joke
by the way, right?
It's a joke and on the East Coast, they'll be like, of course your
tire popped you had all this air in it and it's like middle of
the summer.
I don't know where you're while they're changing your tire, right?
So they're like taking it off and like fixing it for you.
And so it's something like that.
There's variations of yeah, but the point of that and what I think
you mentioned in terms of certain things being a good sign when
you're just you're just there and you're demonstrating.
I'm trying my best.
I don't want to upset you.
I want us to work together on this that collaboration tends to be
a good place at least in the environments where we're going to
right and sometimes you can like you can bring that collaborative
attitude in and and set the tone right away instead of waiting for
somebody else to set the tone of collaboration that you can say you
can kind of bring in something that makes other people want to help
you and and I think that's definitely like super useful when you're
lost or even in the same even in the language that I do speak.
I like sometimes need to use this trick of humble asking for
collaboration like I'm really sorry to bother you that kind of attitude
15:02
right and and sometimes that I might have been able to do the same
thing and achieve the same results just with a lot more unpleasant
aftertaste if I chose a different tactic, but you know, I can get
done like a lot sooner and both end the task in a more pleasant way
so that's what you're looking for or at least for maybe you and I in
the way we're talking about it.
We're looking for a collaborative pleasant and to whatever that
exchange happens to be right like yeah.
Yeah, you know it took me to that wonderful office worker.
She helped me for an hour like like like an hour and I mean we were
we were moving along like it wasn't as if we got stuck at really any
part.
It was just like a lot of moving pieces and I had to go through all
these papers that I brought and like make sure she was like do you
have this I just brought like all of the papers that I thought were
going to be relevant to this and I'm glad I did because I had all the
relevant papers.
I also had like 20 papers.
I didn't need but but there was thankfully only one that's how I
enter us borders every time I bring in all of it.
I bring in my offer letters.
I give my last tax record everything you've got a binder and you're
just like they're like, you know passport and you know Visa and you
have the passport you had a binder and say here this is yeah, man.
Yeah, so it's wonderful.
That's that type of you know, like like your mom has and and like
others do this.
It's hard.
It's not I understand is not something that is natural to pick up
per se right many people get it because of you know, the way their
childhood went they might have really needed to pay attention to
physical body language for good or bad, but it can if you're looking
at it can be useful and it can be trained to an extent as well.
Just like the pitch stuff we were talking about right?
It's yeah, so it can be a learned skill can be a learned
Skill humans.
I was going to say humans are great at learning things.
I I don't think that that's you see this is why I hesitated.
It's not that it's untrue, but it's certainly it has a lot of foot
notes at the end of that statement and the footnotes tell you a
different story, but yeah, yeah.
Yeah, the moral of the story is moms who are starting a life in
its language that they don't necessarily speak and whatnot is
great.
Yeah, they deserve a credit and it's empowering and they you know,
they have like a lot.
Yeah, a lot of credit.
I think goes to them anyone take.
18:03
All right, that's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Ego de Science.
That is E I G O D E S C I E N C.
See you next time.
