MAGAN'S WORLD:A JAPANESE GIRL approached me on the street in Tralee recently, wanting to visit "your mutton chops". It took three repetitions and some mime before I worked out she was looking for a mountaineering shop. While the interaction was embarrassing for her, I rather enjoyed the challenge of stretching my mind into lateral contortions on her behalf.
Communicating is at the heart of travel. More than anything else, it might be what differentiates travel from tourism: the willingness, or at least the need, to communicate with those around you – being separated from the cosseted tourist bubble and required to make oneself understood.
We’ve all found ourselves squirming awkwardly as we try to get our message across. All too often, with me, it involves horses – steering between the words cavolo and cavallo on an Italian menu (cabbage versus horsemeat), or describing a mother as a horse in Mandarin (ma versus ma), or telling a French woman she has beautiful horse, instead of hair, (cheval versus cheveux). It’s just another element that adds to the frisson of a foreign experience, something else to send the synapses spinning more quickly.
Most of us plan to make use of long bus rides or flights to learn a few words of the local language, or at least to scan the glossary at the back of the guidebook, but invariably we find ourselves reminded of homework, and we revert to looking out the window instead.
Yet not speaking the language needn’t be a barrier to communication. Dervla Murphy, who admits in her books to an inability to learn languages, still manages to engage with local people better than any other traveller I know. She seems to get by with a generous smile, a kind disposition and a willingness to resort to improvised sign language, face pulling and even pantomime if necessary. One should never be above mooing or clucking to indicate what one would like for dinner.
The trick is to avoid the “Do you speak English?” attitude at all costs. If such a question must be asked, it should at least be prefaced by “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Tuvaluan or Syriac-Estrangelo, do you speak English?” to make it clear that the inadequacy is yours and not the local’s.
Dancing Matt (wherethe hellismatt.com) ought to be the icon of all non-verbal communicators. He has spent the past three years travelling to far-flung locations, to perform a joyous dance as a way of communicating with the people he meets. In 2006 he spent six months travelling through 39 countries doing his dance, a cross between the funky chicken and a puppet’s jig, and in 2008 he set off again for 14 months through 42 countries, encouraging local people to dance with him. Thousands did.
The sheer joy displayed by people of all colours, cultures and creeds communicating by making fools out of themselves through dance makes the films of these encounters truly inspiring. Nasa has featured them on its Astronomy Picture of the Day website.
Which brings me to Monday evening, the start of a week-long attempt to make myself understood while performing in a play, half of which is in a language most people don’t understand. I wrote the work to see whether it was possible to communicate in one language and be understood in another. That’s the theory, at least. The only way to try it out is to stand in front of an audience and, of course, to be prepared to make a fool out of myself. Gulp.
Manchán Magan’s bilingual play Broken Croí – Heart Briste is at 7pm from Monday to Saturday at Filmbase, Curved Street, Dublin 2. fringefest.com