The Most Awkward Person in the Room

13 July 2024

Updated: 13 July 2024

I should preface this by saying that I don’t think I’m particularly good at English

It’s already challenging enough trying to communicate in a foreign country - add in some loud music and a sketchy location and we’ve just made that about ten times more difficult

English, or something

A friend of mine mentioned to me the other day that they’ve been thinking about moving to the UK because of how much gets lost when communicating in a second language

This morning I met up with some developers and we were chatting about software but also politics (since everything is politics) and a few times during the conversation the perfect sentence popped into my head - but I couldn’t say it. There was the immediate realization that the meaning would be lost, the nuance would not translate.

I’ve been experiencing this a lot at work well, while everyone speaks English perfectly, there’s just a little bit of style that has to be eliminated to communicate clearly - something I don’t find myself doing when speaking to native English speakers. I simplify words, use fewer metaphors, and slow down significantly

Anyways, I went home and spoke to my wife and she had some strong opinions about the churro place she went to. All the signs were in English but when she tried to order in English the person working there didn’t seem to understand what she was saying, even though he repeated all the same things back to her in English

Now, if I’m being completely honest here, some of these problems exist when speaking through language boundaries but it’s a lot less frequent

The Curse of the Awkward

So, anyways - I’m not a super social person - I don’t really know how to speak to people and kind of overthink every interaction

On one of the Photography groups I’m on someone posted an invite to a “Party” which was meant to just be a social event for photographers and creatives. They also added a tiny note saying “no alcohol event, more like networking”

No alcohol you say? Do such things exist? Okay count me in - is what I would have said if I didn’t spend two hours contemplating whether or not this would be the worst experience of my life

It was a bit in the middle of nowhere but looked like it wouldn’t take me too long to get there - so I was like yeah sure. I dropped them a message and said I’d meet them there - this wasn’t someone I’d met before but I know a few people who know them so I figured it should be alright

I got to what Google told me was the destination but this was just a weird abandoned building with automatic doors that wouldn’t open automatically

I saw a person with a camera standing in the passage upstairs and figured I was probably in the right place but had no idea what to expect

The dude I was supposed to meet got there about 5 minutes after I did and we went in together (after awkwardly waiting for someone to see us and let us in)

It was super weird. There were photographers everywhere and people posing all over the space, the music was maaad loud and there were some people live-DJing

This was a kind of chaos I wasn’t ready for

I think the worst part of going to a place you’ve never been is not knowing anyone - events are a sort of social fabric and it’s always a bit scary being a loose thread

I floated about not too sure what to do, looking around, just trying to see what was happening - I was kind of shocked at how diverse the space was. It’s rare in the Netherlands to end up in a room where you aren’t the only person of colour in

This is something I noticed the last time I attended a photography meetup which was that it was a lot less white than the professional spaces I tend to be involved in

There may be some social commentary that could be added here but that’s not what this post is about so moving on

Later in the evening there was a short poetry performance which was cool - but that’s about all I can say about it - the poetry was in Dutch and while I think my rudimentary understanding of the language was enough to grasp the high level idea of it, I feel like a lot of meaning and intent was lost in translation

Thought

I think the way we communicate with people close to us resonates on a level that’s more than just the words we’re saying. There’s an understanding that becomes so difficult to interpret when speaking a second language

Maybe there’s something I’m missing here, maybe there’s something to be had where language isn’t the main factor - where the words we say aren’t the foundation of our relationships. But maybe that’s a thought for another day