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Ask HN: How do you learn to speak the other person's language?
2 points by roundsquare on June 12, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
A year ago when I was a developer at a big bank, I found that I had to speak to the desk I worked for in their language. I.e. I had to know enough finance to have the conversation in terms of stocks, bonds, options, etc...

Now, I'm on the other side of the table and I find that I need to talk to development guys and I find that I end up talking to them in terms of servers, databases, queries, algorithms, etc...

I also end up talking to our lawyers a lot and I find I need to understand legal talk which they are rarely willing to convert into "plain" English (for fear of losing precision I think).

During all this time, I've found that I struggle for some time to "speak the other person's language."

Any advice? I'm sure it comes up a lot for people here who have to talk to customers.



Learn one or two foreign languages preferably before you're twelve.

The mental flexibility gained by struggling to make yourself understood using a completely different vocabulary and grammar will directly translate into an improved ability to adapt to other people's way of thinking, even when your language is the same.


Now I just need a time machine...




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