Culture Shock

Photo by  Jackson Simmer  on  Unsplash Throughout my 18 years in Croatia, there are generally three ways I've dealt with the cultural differences I've encountered:  Completely accept the new culture's way of doing things. Coffee culture comes to mind. Completely reject the new culture's way of doing things. The draft is a prime example. Make some sort of compromise.  This post is about one of the compromises I continue arguing with myself about making. It still causes a degree or two of tension in my mind when it comes up. In fact, I sometimes end up talking to myself (in English) while speaking (in Croatian).  Since a year or two after I moved to Croatia, I have worked towards learning Croatian as well as I can. There have certainly been ebbs and flows, mountains and valleys, but the progress has generally looked like the sort of economic growth chart a company would strive for. But there's one thing I have to - and often do - push against when it comes ...

Grammar is not always fun is it? The Croatian vocative case is a prime example.  My sister-in-law, who teaches Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian in the States has informed me that the vocative case is dying out. You can still apply the vocative to the name Sara and call out SARO!  But, when I call for my wife, I am not allowed to change the last vowel. Instead, I have to say PetrA!  The only explanation is that the vocative case is dying a slow death. Moment of silence please. Diminutives are a different story. In my experience, diminutives are one of the highlights of learning Croatian. The suffix "ica" is added to many female Croatian nouns and BAM!, you have a smaller, more feminine, perhaps more fragile, cuter form of that object. Dictionary.com defines diminutives as: "pertaining to or productive of a form denoting smallness, familiarity, affection or triviality". Drop to droplet is an example of a diminutive in the English language. Let's look at some Cr...

Teaching our kids two languages felt more like an experiment than anything else at the beginning.  We decided, when Enoh was in the womb, that Petra would speak Croatian to our children while I spoke English.  Enoh was confused for awhile - and he began speaking much later than many toddlers.  There were times when I thought maybe we were being cruel to the little guy.  But my wife deserves credit for convincing me to stick with it.   It's paying off.  Enoh seems to already understand who to speak to in English and who to speak to in Croatian without really thinking about it.  Of course, he doesn't know either language well yet.  But he gets by in both.  I've been surprised at how quickly he has learned. Here's a glimpse at what a bi-lingual conversation looks like at 1-and-a-half years old (Ian) and 3 years old (Enoh):

If you're a regular here on the Culture Shock weblog, consider yourself privileged.  No, I don't say that because this is a spectacular blog or anything.  I say it because that means that you are part of the 4 billion people in the world who use English - or "Globish" as Newsweek calls it.  In other words, not only can you read and understand this blog, you are able to speak with, listen to, or understand 67% of the rest of the world when they use English. While I studied teaching ESL four years ago, we were told that we might someday find ourselves in a situation where 2 people from 2 different parts of the world who speak 2 different languages are communicating in a common second language - English.  They used the example of two businessmen - one Japanese and one Dutch meeting in Cairo, and speaking a language which is native neither to the people nor the land.  "Pretty cool", I thought, "I wonder if I will ever s...

I'm not one of those people who love learning languages.  If you do, more power to you.  For me, it's honestly been the toughest thing about moving to Croatia.  There are, however, little nuggets of fun at times.  Like when you discover that you can say something in Croatian that English doesn't have a word for.  Or when you can do funny little word plays that most people wouldn't appreciate. Or when you find phrases you would never use in English when translated literally.  Here are three examples: 3. Moja Žena (My woman).  I just couldn't use this phrase to refer to my wife for the first two years I lived here.  ("Hi! Would you like to meet my woman?)  Instead I would say m oja supruga - which is formal and awkward and means "my spouse who is female".  All the married men I know refer to their wife as moja žena and now I do too.  By the way, doesn't it seem a little strange that if a husband says "my wom...

After thinking about it, Croatian isn't the first second language I've tried to learn.  And I'm not referring to the German course I took in college.  No, it was in the summer of 1998 - the same year 2 phonies brought baseball back to the fore and I was stuck in U.S. Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island South Carolina .  Four men with Smokey Bear "covers" began pounding new values into my life.  One was the importance of a rifle.  Short of sleeping with it, I learned that it was my best friend .  (We've since parted ways.)  Another was physical toughness and endurance.  I never won any of the pugil stick fights, but at least I could run.  The third was learning a new language.  Every sentence began and ended with "sir".  I had been reduced to a "recruit" at best, while the people in charge of me had at least 4 words that came before their name: "Drill Instructor Staff Sargeant so and so". Beds were "racks".  ...

One of the first things I ever learned about myself was that I am an introvert. My dad was really into the Myers-Briggs type indicator tests when I was a kid/teenager and he often told my mom and I how introverted we were. So last week when Petra and I visited some friends in Zagreb and they had us sit down to take the Myers-Briggs test, I knew what the I vs. E result would be. What I soon realized was that the fact that I am introverted has some influence on my ability to learn a language. Here's why: 1. "I am a very private person and I don't like a lot of attention...I really like solitude" That's what the M/B evaluation says. And I agree. Usually in solitude, I don't do a lot of talking - especially in another language. 2. I value deep relationships with few people more than surface-level relationships with a lot of people. I don't do well in groups. Here's the problem. For example, I began a conversation with a good friend of mine like this a few ...