Kuta, the touristic district of Bali, is known for its overcrowded streets. Day and night, these streets are filled with cars, motorbikes and taxis trying to pick you up and drop you off anywhere in Bali for an overpriced ride. Shops fill those streets with merchants parading their products on the tiny sidewalks. Each time someone passes by, merchants point at one of their random products and say "This!" or "Ok!" to attract the attention of the potential buyer. Those English words that merchants barely understand are used to confuse a tourist and get him to buy a product he does not necessarily need or want.
During recess week, my friends and I decided to go and visit Kuta. It has very beautiful and clean beaches, many shops to browse and restaurants that serve delicious food. My friends and I assumed that speaking a different language than the local population would be a barrier for understanding the Balinese culture and society. Fortunately, many locals spoke English.
What was hard to notice at the beginning of our trip is that the English that we used seemed complicated to the locals. We had to repeat every sentence many times until it was understood. Thus, if we asked “Can I have some rice please?”, a local would hardly understand the question. The local would take each word in this question, literally translate it into Balinese and then combine the words in his mother tongue using the same word combination in English. As a result, he would not understand what we said because the question made no sense to him.
After many trials, we finally understood that it was easier for the locals to understand us if we stopped using long sentences and replaced them by one or two word phrases while taking a break between words. For instance, the question asked above would get transformed into “My friend … I want… One rice… Ok?” (It also becomes easier to communicate if we used a deep accent in English). In other words, when we started using ‘broken English’ to talk with a native from Bali, it was easier communicate with him.
Having a common language helps in avoiding intercultural miscommunication but one has to take into consideration the culture and the society in which this language is used, because the words might have the same meaning but how you use them differs from one culture/society to another.
