nuances of English that we take for granted…

my wife is from Japan and spent 28 years there growing up speaking Japanese. she has been learning English here for the past 3 or 4 years, not in any formal sense, but through immersion. she is not fluent and she still has difficulty when people speak fast or mumble. idioms and slang are also a challenge for her. we live together in Hawaii. she rarely gets bummed out however she was last night because of an incident that happened at work yesterday afternoon.

she works as a massage therapist at an active military and veterans/their families exclusive resort. it’s been a rough couple of days there. she had an incident earlier in the week with some 70 year old pervert trying to get himself off but that’s not the story i’m telling. she was upset because she got a bad review from a client. which is only her second bad review in nearly a year and a half.

the story goes that the client is a regular and normally goes to another therapist. my wife was covering for the therapist that day as sort of a last minute replacement. part of the massage business is getting to know the rhythm of your regular clients. it is about learning what their likes/dislikes are, where there pressure points are, etc. my wife offered the client the option to not take the massage that day and come back when the regular therapist was there if she wanted. the client didn’t mind and my wife massaged her.

she told my wife “i don’t care for head massages.” my wife interpreted this as “i don’t care about head massages.”/”i don’t mind head massages.” the client had previously told her that she had neck and shoulder pain. as a massage therapist their job is to treat the pain not the symptoms, so this includes the head, as well, as they are all connected. so she started on her neck and shoulders, and moved up to her head. the client fell asleep; a sign of a job well done by the masseuse.

to make a long story short, the client ended up complaining that my wife had insisted on give her a head massage. my wife’s boss was understanding of the situation and didn’t discipline her or anything. the client was offered to have the massage comped, she refused. i did find out though that she got two free coupons for massage afterward. hmmph.

what this ends up being is an ESL speaker being hurt by a native speaker using a common expression that ultimately only the speaker knows the meaning of. my wife assumed she knew the meaning of “i don’t care about” and applied it to this situation. this is the wrong assumption but it kept her repeating it over and over in her head until i was able to discuss it with her last night.

it is difficult for her in these situations and i try to keep her encouraged and attend to that. i couldn’t ask for a better situation to be in with my goal of becoming an ESL teacher. on a daily basis i am awarded so many opportunities to reflect on my language and the nuances of it.