Tonal languages & Cross-Cultural Speech Gestures

How do we? use speech gestures to build cross-cultural proximity? In other words, how do you get closer, build rapport during your speech if the majority of your audience doesn’t share the same native language as you? In some cases, you use a second language to make that speech, which is also the case for the audience.? For example, a French business leader makes a speech in a Japanese or Chinese branch in English…?

There might? seem to be an advantage to this on native English speakers since it is the most accepted common human language for cross-cultural communications. However, most? English native speakers also need to standardize their English to communicate effectively to all if their education background didn’t allow that to happen already. For example, Irish or Scottish English can be understood much less with an international audience if they speak English the same way as they talk among themselves.?

Body language is universal

Body language is universal but there’s cultural and personal specifics. How can you use body language to build cultural proximity with an audience who doesn’t share the language of speech with you? Well, for example, you make a speech or presentation in English while the majority of your audience are native Chinese speakers, how can you adjust your speech gestures to better deliver your speech??

You don’t need to speak Chinese or Japanese, Indian , etc? to speak the body languages of Chinese or Japanese people. However, when you prepare a speech, you can also prepare adapted speech gestures in order to adjust to your audience, both in patterns and amplitude, even for people who speak the same language.? For example, when people from Taiwan go to the mainland, they can tone down their gesture amplitude and when mainland people go on the Taiwan TV, it is recommended to use more vivid speech gestures. Otherwise, for the mainland people watching the Taiwan TV, they feel like they are quarreling; for people from Taiwan watching the mainland TV shows, they’d feel like they speak as if watching robots perform.?

Here are some examples on how English speakers can adapt their speech gestures to tonal language audiences?

When you think and/or speak the same language 99% of? the time, or in most cases, it is the only language you speak, you share habitual gestures, facial expressions, even speed of counting … for example, if you try to remember a phone number in French you need much more time and mental process need than remember it in Chinese. That’s why some French math teachers would teach their students to count in Chinese even if they don’t speak Chinese because Chinese numbers are? a string of monosyllabic sounds. That’s why you count faster with it.?

French and Belgian people don’t count with the same speed. French people would extend 90 to 4*20 +10, Belgian people read 90? as ??nonante??

When you make a speech or représentation to people whose native language is a tonal language, you don’t need to actually speak the languages, either., you can simplify prepare speech gestures for it.?

Tonal language

Tone is the use of pitch in a language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features. it’s? called intonation. but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. To every syllable. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages

Asian languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, African language Hausa, tribal languages in Americas and Australia, etc Japanese isn’t a tonal language.

Mandarin Chinese: Mandarin is one of the most well-known tonal languages, with four main tones and a neutral tone. For example, the word "ma" can mean "mother" with one tone, "horse" with another tone, "scold" with a different tone, and "question" with yet another tone.

French and Italian are not tonal languages and those 2 languages have melodies that make people feel like listening to songs . Japanese isn’t a tonal language. Oral Japanese sounds more like Italian than Chinese, even it’s written form has a big percentage of Chinese characters.?

For example, You don’t need to actually speak Chinese in order to speak the common habitual body language of Chinese native speakers.??

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One of the things that can give a start is to tap the tones of the Chinese language with your hand

Integrate the 4 tones on the same vowel in sentences you want to stress , for example : the vowel [a], it doesn’t have tones in English but you can add them to build a melody in a given sentence.? Another example: in the following sentence, there are quite a few the vowel [a], when you speak to a native speaker of a tonal language, you can distribute the 4 tones in Chinese to that French sentence’s? different [a], Maman a failli manger toute la grande tablette de chocolat ce matin. It is very interesting to play with it, it’s like adding a new spice to a habitual recipe.?

Observe the most repeated sound in the language, that might be even specific to that language or not, and play it in your mind ??chi?? sound in Chinese , ??si?? in Cantonese, ??a?? in Hausa , this one isn’t about tonal languages, it can be any language, ??shi?? in Portuguese,???o?? and ??tion??( pronounced as -siong?? in French, etc … once you identified that, you find repeat that sound in the background of your mind when making the speech or presentation…there’s always a background and a foreground in everybody’s mind, sometimes when you are highly concentrated, it might be like merging layers, as if there’s only one, but in everyone , even the simplest minded people, they have inner voices??

Find a song or piece of music in Chinese and play it in your mind when you make that speech?

Mimic one of the famous local celebrities, whose? speech style you might find interesting, imitate different ones according to the color or style of that particular speech or presentation you want to give , whether you want to make it energetic, inspiring, or calming , etc.

Thanks for reading me! This isn't just an extract from the speech gestures book, it is also one of the video scripts I wrote in summer 2024, since I haven't done the video and there are just so many notes for videos I haven't made, I just share it here in a newsletter. If you'd like to have more of my contents about speech gestures, there are some on my YouTube channel, I will make more on the subject as well as meditation videos, and also my 3 L wisdom quotes. On my channel, beside those 3 subjects, you can find lots of other stuff on my channel, please only watch what feel relevant!

https://www.youtube.com???@teshajie