After all of the build up, there was no way Dillon was going to miss trying a hot dog in Paris.

“A foot long, on a full baguette, and covered with cheese,” I recalled from my high school exchange trip.

“Sometimes with French Fries stuffed right into the bun!” added my husband.

“It lived up to the hype” said Dillon (not really, he’s 9, but he said something to that effect.)   And then we stopped to ponder the calorie/fat content in such a delicacy.  Ouch!  How can people eat these and stay in shape?

The next morning over breakfast of croissants and butter (isn’t that redundant?) our hostess, good friend and native Parisienne, Laurence, pointed out “But French people are not fat.  We walk everywhere.  We eat well, but we eat three meals and nothing in between.”

Ahh, I thought–the hot dog in the US is the “snack” you eat to hold you over until dinner.  Sure, it can be a meal, but it’s more the “I’m at the game-I smell the cart-Let’s grab a hotdog” kind of thing.

So there are two Intercultural Lessons here:

1.  Your opinion on things will influence your child’s (or student’s) anticipation of them.  That’s a powerful and responsible position, particularly when it comes to engaging in and experiencing different cultural traditions, and

2.  It’s good to understand the full context of an item in another culture, to understand that not only might something be prepared differently, but the custom around its consumption might be different in different cultures (think salad before or after dinner, and cheese for dessert?).

Who knew a hot dog could be such a good teacher?

What favorite foods or pasttimes from your culture have you tried in another?  How were they different?  How were they the same?

The traditional Jewish sandwich is a corned beef on rye, right? 

It was actually our (not Jewish) Parisian host who told us about Sascha Finkelsztajn’s.

Having been to a Jewish seder in Brazil and with a nod to his burgeoning Jewish cultural identity, 9 year old Dillon said it would be fun to try a bagel in Paris.    Bernadine excitedly told us about Sacha Finkelsztajn’s in the Jewish quarter (27 Rue des Rosiers). 

“I love it there, they have the typical Jewish Sandwich!” she exclaimed in French.

“Corned Beef on Rye?” I asked in English.

“Oui,” she confirmed.  “And they have that traditional Jewish bread!”

“We have to go there,” shouted Dillon at the prospect of combining his zest for exploration with his passion for all things edible.

While in New York the typical Jewish deli sandwich is corned beef on rye with mustard, in Paris it turned out to be pastrami on bagel with eggplant and red pepper spreads.

And the bagels were sort of…braided.  “Isn’t that cute,” I thought.

In retrospect, we wanted to see the French traditional bagel to see how it compared to our’s in the US…with the unconscious assumption being that OUR’s was the right one, and this “foreign” one was the adaptation.

The more accurate comparison might be the evolution of the bagel–Sacha’s grandparents Dora and Itzik came from Poland in 1930 and opened the shop in 1946.  Leo Rosten, in “The Joys of Yiddish” credits the first printed mention of the bagel to Krakow, Poland, in 1610.   Maybe this French bagel is the “real” bagel, having come straight from the source.

Sacha himself may not care, as he sits in the back at the cash register and a steady stream of customers from all over continues to line up and order.  At one point while conducting our business in French we discovered I was from the US, my husband Brazilian, the young woman making our sandwiches Polish, the person behind me in line a relocated New Yorker. 

For a minute I wanted to say well what the heck are we all doing speaking French?  But then you realize it’s because you’re in Paris.

In a bright yellow, authentic Jewish deli.

How authentic are your authentic traditions?  Who owns the “real one,” when they spread around the globe?

Bagel photo credits Chocolate and Zucchini (Parisian bagel, left) and NYTimes Blog (New York Bagel, right)

Some people say they have the “whole world in their hands.” I say the world has it’s hands on me, and it’s calling out for connection!

Did you ever notice that when you plan conversations in your head, when you control both sides, they seem to go much better?  That’s because real life experience isn’t as ‘clean,’ we’re not in as much control.  And that’s why it’s critical, no less so for Intercultural Communications, to actually get out into the world and “practice what we preach.”

So I’m off into the world, one place where I don’t speak the language, one were I do.  Dillon’s coming too, and will get a chance to practice his own budding language skills. 

How will we feel?  What will we learn?  Who will we inadvertently offend?

We’ll let you know.

As someone married to an “Eugenio” (Brazilian Portuguese ay-oh-ZHEN-ee-oh) I was delighted to find the website Hearnames.com, which offers audio pronunciation by native speakers of hundreds of names in 44 language categories. 

Dale Carnegie taught millions how to Win Friends and Influence People with ideas like “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”  And in today’s global market, interacting and selling “in any language” is indeed a reality. 

Telling Jianguo “how about if I just call you Jim,” especially if he’s the CEO, might not bode well for your big international deal!

I heard about the site from Andres Tapia, author of The Inclusion Paradox and Chief Diversity Officer of Hewitt Associates, on his blog (via @joegerstandt, @andresttapia on Twitter).  His point, well taken, is that

To achieve inclusion, we need to know how to constructively call out our differences. But what if you can’t even pronounce each others’ names?”

What if you need more advanced lessons?  You won’t want to miss twochinesecharacters tongue tennis.  I’m not even going to try to explain.  But, as a marketer I’ve got to respect their use of visuals, and it does work (take a look at the link above).

I finally wrote a love poem to my husband 10 years into our marriage.  In the poem I pointed out “I would have written sooner, but the problem YOU-MAY-KNOW, was finding the right word, to rhyme with EU-GEN-IO.” 

Hmm…any websites to help with that?  What about you?  Do you have a hard name to pronounce?  How is your pronunciation?

I definitely smoked Virginia Slims when I smoked 30 years ago.

But who wouldn’t want to be that tall, thin, confident, brave, free-spirited, adventurous woman who didn’t take sh— from anybody.  Sign me up!

Without even inviting me to a focus group tobacco companies have taken note, creating advertising targeted at women in third world countries.  According to Douglas Bettcher, a World Health Organization expert, the tobacco industry is selling cigarettes “using stereotypes such as associating smoking with women’s liberation, the kind of stereotypes featured in smoking promotions decades ago in the rich nations.”

WHO presented a report late last week on tobacco use and women in anticipation of world anti-tobacco day on May 31.

As cigarette advertising laws in the US have become more stringent (you won’t find Joe Camel around anymore), tobacco companies have turned to new horizons.  Of course in the US it’s because we know that smoking kills.  According to the American Cancer Society, “each year about 443,600 people die from illnesses related to tobacco use.”

Whose job do you think it is to design “pink packs of cigarettes…aggressively promoted to attract girls” or  cigarette packs “resembling a perfume containers,” to get little girls in foreign lands to take up smoking?  

In the spirit of intercultural appreciation and respect, I am going to go buy my 9 year old a pack of cigarettes.  Well, that’s one way to look at it, right? 

Photo credits: flickr MsBlueSky, ANT204 University of Toronto

I’m often asked “what got you started in your interest in intercultural communications?”  Sometimes I say it was born inside of me, referencing the names of my pet black and gold fish at age 10, Martin Luther Fish and Golda My-Fish respectively (what 10 year old names their fish that?). 

Other times I refer to my first trip outside of the USA, on a three week exchange program at the Instituto de Filologia Hispanica in Saltillo, Mexico.  (This picture, which surfaced on Facebook today via an old friend, shows me deep in study…See, I told you, mom and dad that’s ALL we DID–we did not go to discos, learn how to do Tequila shots, or hang out with cute boys!)

This picture seems so calm for a life changing moment.  After 3 years of “levanta-te” (stand up), “pasa a la mesa” (go to the table), and “toma el lapiz” (pick up the pencil) I burst into Mexico like a “papagallo,” a parrot who could not stop talking. 

That I could be speaking and communicating in another language was exhilarating.  And, the night I separated from my USAmerican friends to go to a wedding reception with my Mexican tutor was pivotal in understanding the idea of multiple perspectives, as I found myself the sole anglo-USAmerican at a gathering of several hundred…for the first time I was the minority…I was ”the other.”

I came back home to St. Louis and at 15 road my bike up and down Olive Blvd. and applied for jobs at every business along the way.  I lied about my age (legally I was supposed to be 16) and started hostessing at Caleco’s after school.  Anything to start saving money to travel again.  I started studying French in fall, and the rest has grown from there.

Did you see all that in this picture?  What are the cardinal moments that changed your life?

I found out from my Chinese-American friend (my designation-not sure how he self-identifies) on his Facebook update today that he felt misled by what he thought was a traditional Mexican holiday.  However, he discovered and shared that:

Cinco de Mayo is only a big deal in America. It’s not even a holiday in Mexico…It’s actually a Hallmark Holiday!!!

Is Cinco de Mayo a Mexican Tradition?

A quick Internet search reveals there is an original tie to Mexico.  The holiday commemorates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at The Battle of Puebla in 1862.  The holiday is celebrated regionally throughout the state of Puebla in Mexico. 

It seems that many (USAmericans) mistake Cinco de Mayo for Mexican Independence Day.  It’s not.  That holiday is celebrated September 16.  And for any art history buffs who also thought of Cinco de Mayo by Francisco Goya, that was made in 1808 in Spain, so no connection there either.

Or is it a US “Hispanic” Celebration?

And that, my friends, is the end of the history lesson, and the move into a sterotypically USAmerican “Hispanic” Holiday that brings together a melange of seemingly “hispanic” customs and traditions to celebrate Cinco de Mayo in the US.  (Suddenly I’m reminded of reports, albeit false, of former Vice President Dan Quayle’s lament that he hadn’t studied Latin to be able to communicate with ‘those people’ in Latin America.)

For my Facebook friend, he ads that “I’ll still be drinking, of course!” And he won’t be alone.

How it’s celebrated in the US

There’s everything from the celebration in Holyoke Colorado that begins with a Salsa Contest (which I just found out from a Panamanian salsa dance instructor has it’s roots in Cuba and Puerto Rico.) to the Cinco de Mayo Pub Crawl in Chicago that visits Moe’s Cantina, a Spanish Tapas Restaurant.  To note, the National Museum of Mexican Art, sort of the keeper of Mexican culture in Chicago, does not feature a Cinco de Mayo event.

So, is it all in good fun, or is it cultural appropriation?  Or perhaps it is, as my facebook friend discovered, simply a platform for marketing.

100% Commercial Value:  That’s USAmerican!

Companies such as Halloweenmart seem to perpetuate stereotypes, offering Cinco de Mayo ‘costumes’ that range from silly to bordering (or crossing the border) to offensive or racist, a la the Native American or Japanese Geisha costumes seen in October.  Target offers a selection of Cinco de Mayo books.  And, of course, you can order an online Cinco de Mayo card at Hallmark.

I’ll be curious to hear from my son tonight to see if the holiday was discussed at school (he did–in French class).  What do you think?  Do you celebrate Cinco de Mayo?  For the margaritas, or do you feel a cultural significance? 

Photo credit:  Metromix Chicago, round up of Chicago Cinco de Mayo Events.

In today’s multicultural world (depending on where you live) it is common to engage with people for whom English is not their first language.  While sometimes the interaction may be casual, with not much at stake, other times business deals, potential sales or enduring relationships may be at stake. Here are three tips to spoil the relationship from the get-go.

1.  If he or she seems not to understand what you’ve said, repeat it verbatim, only louder.  In fact shout it out.  The louder you speak English, the easier it is to understand.

2.  If the person is with an interpreter, boyfriend, child, who speaks better English, speak directly to the interpreter, boyfriend, child.  Turn your body to face that person, so that your body language also communicates that you are speaking with latter.  Use the third person, as in “where is he from?”

3.  If he or she is speaking English with you, albeit with an accent, interrupt and ask what language they speak, or just assume they speak Spanish, and answer in Spanish.  That’s particularly effective if the person is from Russia.  Actually, on this last one, the reaction does vary from person to person.  Sometimes people are relieved to be able to communicate in their native language, others will be offended, because they are speaking English.

While speaking louder doesn’t work, re-framing what you’ve said, or simply coming up with another way to phrase it can help, and addressing the person with whom you are speaking is a matter of respect.  For the final one, it may vary depending on the context of your interaction, and you may be able to take your lead from the person with whom you are speaking.

Any langague barriers you have experienced?  Have you been on the receiving end, when in another country?  How did it feel?

photo credit, Flickr: Tranchis