19
submitted 4 days ago by Sapphy@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

For example you might use swear words casually or come off as insensitive without even realizing it. Your intention might be to give an empathetic or thoughtful response, but instead, you just sound cold

Have you ever experienced this?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] yxc999@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes, ten years ago when I already spoke/wrote perfect English on paper but didn't have much experience talking to actual people (CS GO voice chat doesn't count) I often had times where what I wrote in English would have been a perfectly reasonable way to express an emotion in German, but the other person found it odd. Of course I didn't literally translate a German expression 1:1, that would not be the yellow of the egg (ha). Instead I struggled to for example with a general way to acknowledge the feelings of the other person, I always got confused responses since the words in isolation were grammatically correct and in German would have been empathic enough, but the, I wanna say, "social weight" of the words was actually way off. Again, I was already speaking perfect English back then, but with no real-world experience. Societal differences may have also played a role, as Germans are generally regarded to be more cold than the English or the inhabitants of the FSA (Facistic States of America) plus me having autism didn't exactly provide for a good basis of understanding the weight or intended emotion of the words I chose back then. Now I think I have a good understanding, but I have to conciously "translate the emotion" as well as the actual language. So yeah, I completely get you.

this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
19 points (95.2% liked)

Asklemmy

55818 readers
832 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS