When Speaking the Same Language Still Leads to Misunderstanding
A simple lunch in Sarawak turned into a lesson about language and culture. Discover how ordering white rice became rice vermicelli, and why speaking the same language doesn't always mean communicating the same way.
KC
9/8/20263 min read
One of the interesting things about travelling is discovering that speaking the same language doesn't necessarily mean people communicate in the same way.
The differences can be surprisingly small.
A word. A pronunciation. A phrase that sounds completely normal in one place but unfamiliar somewhere else.
I witnessed a simple example of this about 12 years ago in Sarawak, Malaysia.
At the time, I was travelling there for business and meeting clients and associates. Sarawak was much less familiar to many Singaporeans than it is today. When I mentioned Kuching to people back home, quite a few didn't know where it was or had never heard of it.
Tourism has grown since then, and Kuching is certainly much better known today.
But this particular incident didn't happen at a tourist attraction.
It happened over lunch.
When 白米饭 Became 白米粉
I was eating at a local eatery in a smaller town in Sarawak.
At the table behind me was a group of customers from China. From their accents and the expressions they used, it was quite easy to tell they were visitors from mainland China.
This was around 12 years ago, when the town didn't receive many foreign visitors.
The local Chinese community there was also accustomed to communicating in local Chinese dialects, particularly Hokkien, alongside the languages commonly spoken in Sarawak.
One of the visitors wanted rice.
He asked the owner for:
白米饭 (bái mǐ fàn)
White rice
Perfectly normal Mandarin.
But the owner didn't understand what he wanted.
In Singapore and many Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, we commonly just say:
白饭 (bái fàn)
White rice
The additional 米 (mǐ), meaning rice, made 白米饭 sound unfamiliar to the owner.
There was some confusion between the customer and the owner.
Eventually, instead of receiving a bowl of white rice, the customer was served:
白米粉 (bái mǐ fěn)
Rice vermicelli, commonly called bee hoon in Southeast Asia.
I was sitting nearby watching the whole thing unfold.
It was funny.
But it also taught me something.
Nobody Was Actually Speaking the Wrong Language
The interesting part of this story is that neither side was necessarily wrong.
The visitor from China was speaking Mandarin.
The local Chinese owner could understand Mandarin.
They were talking about rice, probably one of the most basic foods you could possibly order in this part of Asia.
Yet they still couldn't understand each other.
Why?
Because language doesn't develop in isolation.
It develops together with the people who use it.
Chinese communities have lived across Southeast Asia for generations. Over time, the Chinese languages spoken in Singapore, Malaysia and other parts of the region have developed alongside Malay, English and numerous Chinese dialects.
Different communities also retained different vocabulary and expressions.
Meanwhile, Mandarin in China continued developing in its own environment.
So two people may technically speak Mandarin while using slightly different words for everyday things.
And food is a particularly good place to see these differences.
One Language Can Have Many Local Versions
English works the same way.
Ask for "chips" in Britain and you may receive something different from what an American expects when hearing the same word.
A Singaporean saying someone is going to "take" a bus sounds perfectly normal to us.
Other expressions that Singaporeans use every day may sound unusual to someone who learnt English somewhere else.
Chinese is no different.
Mandarin may provide a common language for Chinese-speaking communities, but local vocabulary, dialects, history and culture still influence how people actually communicate.
And Southeast Asia makes this particularly interesting.
A Chinese Malaysian family in Sarawak may speak differently from a Chinese Singaporean family.
Someone from Penang may use expressions influenced by Hokkien.
Someone from another Malaysian state may have stronger Cantonese, Hakka or other linguistic influences.
Someone from Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen or another part of China brings another linguistic environment altogether.
They may all be ethnically Chinese.
They may all understand Mandarin.
But that doesn't mean they communicate identically.
Language Is Part of Understanding a Culture
This is one reason I believe travelling should involve more than visiting attractions.
Listen to people.
Notice what they call their food.
Listen to how they order.
Pay attention to the expressions they use with one another.
You start discovering things about a culture that you may never learn from a tourist guide.
Even something as ordinary as ordering rice can tell you something about migration, dialect, history and how communities developed.
It also reminds us not to assume that because somebody looks like us or speaks the same language, they necessarily think or communicate exactly as we do.
That matters when travelling.
Instead of immediately thinking, "Why don't they understand me?", sometimes it is better to ask:
How do people here normally say this?
Learn a few local expressions.
Ask questions.
Listen.
And don't worry too much if you get something wrong.
Sometimes those misunderstandings become the stories you remember years later.
More than a decade later, I still remember that lunch in Sarawak.
A customer ordered 白米饭, white rice.
And received 白米粉, rice vermicelli.
Just one character different.
But behind that simple misunderstanding was a much bigger lesson about travelling:
Knowing a language helps you communicate. Understanding how local people use that language helps you understand their culture.
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