Q/D #11

"And I began to notice that often, when I joined in, the others would look startled, and the conversational topic would come to a halt."(3)

Many of us are used to conversing in the same style in different languages, no one ever tells us about the "unwritten rules". In her case, she was joining conversations in a way the Japanese considered weird while Americans considered it normal. She described it as playing a sport, Americans would be playing tennis and Japanese playing bowling, both sports but played entirely differently. It's really interesting learning that just because you learn a new language, you don't really know much about the way you converse using it. I guess, I subconsciously started learning English and conversing in the same way I did when speaking Arabic, which looking back at now, I can see why some teachers were confused on how straight forward I was with them rather than talking to them in a "nicer" matter compared to how I was used to talking to my teachers back in my country. Unwritten rules are something no one ever teaches you, you just kind of learn it through error and trial.