Magdalena Hoeller

And thirdly, what is the delivery of it all?

So what's the intonation?

Is it too strong, too weak?

And that's where intercultural partners, they bring their language background, they bring their cultural background to one table and have to negotiate this in a heated moment at the same time.

There's too much happening.

Now, fighting is already difficult with monolingual partners, but adding all of these elements, that requires a lot of communication.

But let's be honest, who actually sits down to determine the terms of a fight before a fight, right?

It doesn't happen.

The second challenge I'd like to share with you today is humor.

Making each other laugh is a big part of relationships, but humor often doesn't translate very well.

Sometimes a joke is funny in one language, but it falls flat in another, or it could be quite offensive.

Now, linguistically, we can break this down into two parts, into receiving humor and producing humor.

From a receiving side, a partner might feel unsure if they grasp the true meaning of a joke or just a superficial facet thereof.

That could be a purely linguistic issue, like not picking up on sarcasm or not recognizing a pun because the language skills just aren't there yet.

There's also the cultural aspect, of course.

Partners with different language backgrounds naturally grew up in different in-groups of a joke, so the people that understand a joke and the people that don't.

I never understood why the Aussie phrase, shrimp on a barbie, isn't actually funny to Australians, it actually quite annoys them.

My husband doesn't understand why the super-cringy, nostalgic 90s TV show Liebesgeschichten und Heiratssachen is so hilarious to me.

Different in-groups.

That means that intercultural partners have limited common ground to work with here.