By Kayla Meyers
Hello! Ahoj! Bonjour! Hallo! Ciao!
English, Czech, French, Dutch and Italian. These five are just a taste of the languages that we encountered on our trip to Europe. While I had visited Paris before our trip, I was unsure what to expect in the other three cities, as I had never communicated with people who speak languages other than English, Spanish and French. Personally, I can't speak any language other than English, so I relied on Google Translate to learn key phrases that would help me get by at restaurants and shops, but this barely scratched the surface. After visiting each of the four cities, I realized that each has a very distinct culture that communicates not only verbally, but non-verbally as well.
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| Delicious treat from Prague. |
On our first day in Prague, I started to pick up on some of the Czech body language and communication styles. It seemed as if the locals in Prague were a bit cold to our loud American ways. I felt as if not many of the people that we met knew how to speak English, or at least, very little. However, at McCann-Erickson (an advertising agency), I noticed that some of the commercials we saw had English-speaking characters with Czech captions. This is something I don't commonly see in America - the advertisements are usually always English-speaking characters. The advertisements shown were also able to connect with people other than purely Czech audiences. For example, the Fidorka commercial shown influenced quite a few of us on the trip to visit the supermarket and purchase the delicious chocolate treats. On our free day in Prague, we were able to see more of the culture and experience more of the locals and how they communicate. I still felt a sense of coldness at times, especially when people realized that we were Americans and couldn't speak a bit of Czech, except for the simple "hello", "goodbye", and "thank you" that we had learned from Google Translate.
