The title says it all. My apologies if I reminded you of your teacher in school but have you ever wonder why miscommunication happens or why our messages never got conveyed the way we want it to be conveyed? One of the major reason is because we tend to use “short-cut” language. For example, when we invite someone for lunch, some of us will use “short-cut” language by looking and simply saying to the person, “lunch?” or we could make a full sentence by saying, ‘Do you like to join me for lunch?”. If the person is a literal person, he will probably be scratching his head and thinking to himself whether you are expecting him to invite you for lunch or whether you are asking him whether there is lunch available in the premises or whether you want him to join you for lunch?
A former colleague of mine who is from the Netherlands informed me that when he first came to Malaysia, he was extremely puzzled with Malaysians. He said to me that Malaysians are curious and strange people. His Malaysian colleagues would often asked him “Have you taken your lunch?” or “Have you eaten?” but never once invited him to join them for lunch. He finds this rather puzzling as to why they want to know whether he had eaten lunch when they have no intention of inviting him at all. As we all know, Malaysians are friendly and polite people. When Malaysians asked a question of such nature, more often than not, we do not expect an answer. It is just out of sheer politeness. When I informed this to my Dutch friend, he just scratched his head and still couldn’t get it. He also came to understand this culturally thing after his first year living in Kuala Lumpur. So, in order not to confuse our foreign friends, “Don’t be lazy, speak in full sentence!”
A former colleague of mine who is from the Netherlands informed me that when he first came to Malaysia, he was extremely puzzled with Malaysians. He said to me that Malaysians are curious and strange people. His Malaysian colleagues would often asked him “Have you taken your lunch?” or “Have you eaten?” but never once invited him to join them for lunch. He finds this rather puzzling as to why they want to know whether he had eaten lunch when they have no intention of inviting him at all. As we all know, Malaysians are friendly and polite people. When Malaysians asked a question of such nature, more often than not, we do not expect an answer. It is just out of sheer politeness. When I informed this to my Dutch friend, he just scratched his head and still couldn’t get it. He also came to understand this culturally thing after his first year living in Kuala Lumpur. So, in order not to confuse our foreign friends, “Don’t be lazy, speak in full sentence!”
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