One Table, Four Languages

This was kinda fun.

A few nights ago, our suitemate Omar invited us to dinner in celebration of his twenty-third birthday. There were a total of ten of us there enjoying all different kinds of delicious Chinese food with, naturally, some tasty watered-down Budweiser. It was pretty cool just sitting back from the conversation for a few moments and looking around the table.

First, there was our friend Omar the birthday boy; he is from Benin (W. Africa), his native tongue is French, and he is proficient in English and Mandarin.

Seated to his right were two girls from Thailand. They didn’t say a whole lot, so I believe they only spoke Thai, and a bit of French.

Next to him was my friend Lucas, haling from San Diego and speaking a little English and Mandarin, and two spots over from him was myself, with similar language capabilities.

Between Lucas and me was Omar’s roommate Hussainu, a Malian dude (W. Africa) who also speaks French as his native tongue, but very little English and Mandarin.

To my right were three of Omar’s Chinese classmates from various parts of China, all who supplemented their Mandarin with a bit of English.

And finally, between them and Omar was a Japanese girl, who could speak conversational English and pretty good Mandarin.

So throughout the meal, there were four different languages being spoken at various points in time at this single ten-person table, and there would have been five had another Japanese person joined us. This is something I absolutely love about being part of the expat community here.