Cross cultural communication

I was back again at drivers ed this afternoon, and the inability of the teacher to effectively explain something made me think about French and American cross cultural communication.

I was one of at least three foreigners who were in the class, and one of the two other men didn't speak French wonderfully well. This man had answered a question incorrectly about what to do if a police officer is directing traffic, and the teacher started explaining that if the officer was "de face" or "de dos" you stopped and waited, but if he was "de profile" you pass through the intersection. The man clearly didn't understand, and the teacher repeated the same explanation about 5 times. I was on the verge of saying "Maybe you need to define what "de face" and "de profile" mean," but the teacher finally used his hand to mime the positions of the officer. To top it all off, he has a tendancy to shout instead of talk, which makes him really grating.

This made me think of the teacher at my "Civic Education" day and how she didn't know how to speak in front of foreigners, and I wondered if French people in general understand what it means to struggle to communicate in another language. It seems like their only solution to someone who doesn't understand is to repeat the same thing over and over again (instead of finding synonyms, making a drawing, or miming).

But then again, I don't know that Americans are that much better. If there's no "dos" for the Spanish operator, are people understanding if the person on the line has trouble with the language? I know my grandmother doesn't understand any kind of accent and kind of turns off her ears as soon as she hears one, but she grew up in the pretty homogenous California central valley (before all the migrant workers arrived) and I'll cut her some slack since she just turned 90.

When I worked at the public library in San Diego I often had questions from patrons who spoke with a heavy accent, and I always did my best to give clear and concise responses. A number of my colleagues were immigrants as well, including a supervisor I sometimes had a hard time understanding (for which I always felt really bad).

Maybe it's the high diversity of countries of origin in the States that means that people are often in contact with someone who learned English as a second language, whereas in France, the immigration is heavily weighed towards former colonies.

Maybe I should tout my services as a consultant to help businesses accomodate foreigners and make them aware of the difficulties from a foreigner's point of view. Think anyone would pay for that?