Jonah Monologue

Jonah: In the final part of this podcast, we look into personal experiences of my brother and I when the importance of language has been more prevalent than ever. Both my brother have gone to South America on an exchange program with our camp. He went in the summer of 2013; I went in the summer of 2015. On your trip, don’t you think it was very hard to communicate with your homestay?
Jacob: Yes, it was one of the most difficult tasks I have faced to be honest. I never took Spanish as a class before I went to Chile, so understanding them and trying to communicate with them could not have been more difficult. What was that story you told me about that one time in Uruguay you were with your homestay brother and not knowing his language hurt your

Towards the end of my trip, my homestay brother and I were playing videogames together. When the game we were playing ended, he said to me, doing his best to speak English, “Do you want to do one more game or do you want to be alone?” Pedro was considered the “funny guy” among his friends. Him and his parents would communicate in a very sarcastic manner, and whenever I would ask them a dumb question, they would respond sarcastically. Knowing how sarcastic of a person he was, I thought responding sarcastically would do no harm. I said to him, “Yes Pedro, that’s the only thing I want right now, for you to leave the room so I can be alone.” After I said this, Pedro’s demeanor turned from happy to sad. Without really thinking about his abilities in speaking English, I followed with, “I am just kidding.” The problem, which I did not realize until after, was that he did not know what the word kidding meant. He proceeded to leave the living room where we had been sitting, and go into his bedroom, which I had been sharing with him. I sat there flabbergasted for a minute or two. After thinking about it, I realized that our languages are so different that to me, sarcastically responding to him was no big deal to me, but to him, my response was very rude and