Two travelers meet in the desert in a foreign land where they must throw their fortunes together to survive. They speak different languages that share an overlapping vocabulary. For example, in Frank’s language, the word “bot” means “sleep” while in Yuri’s language it means “anger.” The word “nasfly” means “guard” to one and “kill” to the other. After some confusing and hostile exchanges, Frank and Yuri realize that the words mean different things to them, and they believe their difficulties are at an end as they resort to using gestures and pictures in the sand to communicate with each other.
Night falls and, as their meager fire wanes, they hear the grunt and howls of carnivores surrounding them. In the dark, gestures and picture are useless, so they begin barking orders to each other on how to protect themselves, each in his own language. They hear the orders from the other and apply the meanings those words would have in their own language. In the morning, the remains of Yuri and Frank are found, and their rescuers are puzzled over why they died when they had plenty of fuel to keep the fire going as well as defensive means to keep the animals at bay. Who was at fault?
Obviously, the answer is that they share equal “fault” in their fate, but perhaps neither of them could avoid it. While perfectly capable of communicating through neutral methods under ideal circumstances, when under pressure, they both resorted to using their native language and hearing the other through that same native language. And had Frank and Yuri survived their night in the dessert, each would blame the other for their peril, stating that the other had refused to listen.
Unfortunately, Frank and Yuri are no different than the rest of us. The primary medium we have for communicating with each other is words, but the nuances and sometime the outright meaning of those words vary from person to person. That is a fact that authors must live with, do their best to accommodate, and know that, at times, they will fail. Some reader will walk away with an interpretation that is quite different from what the author intended. Given the limitation of language to convey actual meaning, it is a wonder that we communicate at all, but in general, we manage because the approximations are close enough and we can adjust our words or our listening to the other person’s language.
Put us under enough personal stress, however, and our ability and willingness to filter the familiar words through a foreign language fails. Our capacity to hear from the other person’s perspective used ends, and arguments break out where none had been before. And after false disagreement is cleared up at the end, both parties remain resentful that they were blamed for not accommodating the other’s language, when the other person could have just as easily accommodated theirs.
I have firsthand experience with this problem – I suspect we all do – and I don’t have a solution. But I wonder over the centuries how many friends were divided, marriages ended, and wars begun over our inability to hear past the words. Maybe we all need to try a bit harder.