As a foreign missionary living in a culture not your own, trying to communicate in a language you don’t speak well or at all, signs and wonders are sure to follow:
You sign and they wonder!
#Missionary Learn Any Language, Even The Hardest [INFOGRAPHIC] signs/wonders will follow. You sign they wonder! http://t.co/0v5c5MHTPd
— David Joannes (@davidjoannes) February 12, 2014
I cannot tell you how many times I have made awful linguistic mistakes while learning Mandarin, Tagalog and Thai—some more crude than others. Hopefully I’ve been forgiven by my host culture by now!
In my early days of studying foreign language, I only heard gibberish, and simply repeated the sounds and intonations. I tried hard, but language learning has many layers, not just grammatical. The deeper innuendos of cultural history are prevalent in nearly every aspect of communication.
You Can Learn Any Language, Even If It’s One Of The World’s Hardest [INFOGRAPHIC]
I speak fluent Mandarin, decent Tagalog, and am now learning Thai. But as a foreigner, gibberish was the language I heard most acutely.
This girl sums it up perfectly, even though she’s not really saying anything.
Girl Speaks Gibberish With Perfect Accents To Show What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners
What do you sound like to a foreigner?
19-year-old Finnish YouTube user Sara is here to unveil the mystery. Although she is speaking total gibberish, her spot-on accents give us a clue as to how you might sound to someone who doesn’t speak your language.
To hear UK and American English accents skip to 0:50 and 1:12. But trust me, this whole video is worth watching.
Missionary: as you try to master your host language, more power to you as you progress from gibberish to powerful communication!
“You sign and they wonder”, credit: @pureheartmanila
Original post: huffingtonpost.com
