This past week JT and I had the opportunity to learn more Hebrew with our tutor Maya. This time we learned about days, months and numbers. By the end of the session we had learned all twelve months, the seven days of the week, and could count to ten. Months in Hebrew are one of the easiest things to learn. Take for instance January is pronounced “Janwell” and August is pronounces “Awegoost.” We are lucky that we only had to know the 12 months, as the ancient Hebrew calendar has 20 or so months. The seven days of the week basically all consist with the first word “Yam” and is then followed by another word. We were able to count to ten, but were not able to get all the way up to the 31 days in each month. So far we did a great job learning what we set out to learn for the week.
During the week I also had a follow up meeting with Dr. Scinicariello to track our progress. Due to our group’s scheduling conflicts we are only able to meet once a week, but it still works out because JT and I live with each other so we are able to test our Hebrew out on each other on a routine basis. As we discussed in the meeting sometimes the best learning is between a novice learner and a novice learner because we are going through the same struggles of learning what we are really trying to understand when learning the language.
The reading Figuring Foreginers Out was more of a refresher for me than new information. I learned similar things about cultures and their various make ups from my classes in international marketing and from my classes that I took abroad. In fact I took a class abroad that only talked about Hofstede's principals. In it we talked about individualism vs collectivism, power distance, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance. The United States is known as an individualistic society in which there a big difference in power in the corporate world. Men must always act manly and are thought of as soft or homosexual if they show feelings that are typically associated with women. On the other hand in numerous culteres around the world the behavior is the exact opposite. Take for instance Sweden, where IKEA is from. In Sweden a customer can contact the CEO of the company, if they want to talk about something. That is unheard of here, but the power distance is so low in Sweden that just because a person has the title of CEO does not mean they are far superior to the other workers. Also, in that society the people win and lose as a team, not as individuals. There are no bonuses for superior performance at the end of the year, unless the company reaches its goal at the end of the year.
What I did learn towards the end of the article was about the non verbal cues that are accepted in one culture and disdained in another. In a culture like America, we like our distance, we are firm with our speaking and handshakes, and always maintain eye contact. In an Asian culture, distance is less of an issue and speaking and handshakes are more soft, and eye contact throughout a conversation is un heard of and almost considered rude. A person from culture one that is encountering a person from culture two needs to recognize these differences so that the interaction will not be awkward or interpreted as disrespectful. As long as one is aware of the difference in values and behavior, there will be no problem in bridging the gap between cultures and getting along with everyone. The problem is few are that cultured, that they know everything about an entirely different culture's behavior.
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