Sometimes a language barrier is an accommodation: Communicating and traveling while autistic
Originally published on Medium
The question I heard often after traveling with my husband in Southeast Asia for a few months was “Is the language barrier hard?” “How do you handle the language barrier?”
And my first reaction was “Uh, no?”
But then I thought about it more. And ended up writing this to really figure out why.
Because, honestly, it’s not easy looking for something to eat when no signs are in English and the menus don’t have pictures.
So the language barrier is hard.
But.
But it’s a simple-to-understand hard for me because I grew up obsessed about communication. And then communication literally became my job when I was an ASL interpreter.
So I’m always thinking about being understood, no matter what area I’m in.
How do we eliminate a language barrier? Learn a new language. Simple solution.
And with a language barrier, people expect miscommunications. It’s not a surprise. We work together to reach our conversational goal. It’s a good feeling.
But what about when the barrier is not language-based? What about when we speak the same language, same dialect, but still experience miscommunication?
That’s more complex.
There’s no one simple solution.
That’s what I experience in my home country.
People expect to understand me here. They make assumptions about the meaning behind my words, my gestures, my silences, even when there’s no hidden meanings.
People who speak my language are surprised when miscommunication happens. And I feel the responsibility to manage the conversation to reach understanding.
It’s not easy.
Speaking the same language is no guarantee for a great social interaction. Sometimes the opposite is true.
One of my favorite Southeast Asia interactions happened in a Bangkok coffee shop. The owner was an older woman, a grandma watching her grandson for the day inside her Instagram-post perfect coffee shop. She knew a few words of English and I knew a few Thai words. But I ordered a drink and asked for the wifi password and she responded. We understood each other perfectly well.
Speaking a different language is no guarantee for miscommunication.
Sometimes it’s an accidental accommodation.