“Thank you for being such a ‘good’ friend,” she wrote and, although I knew what she’d meant, I was a bit taken aback. Was it a cultural difference or a misused punctuation mark?
My friend had written this sentence on the beautiful card she’d given me before going back to her country. To her, putting “good” in quotation marks meant emphasis. She wanted to emphasize that I’d been a great friend to her. But in the US, and in my own culture, putting a word in quotation marks could have an opposite meaning and could sometimes even indicate irony. We all know this ironic tone of voice when someone says, Thanks for being so “helpful,” to someone who hasn’t been helpful at all. Although we can hear it when verbalized, when we write it, the quotation marks are the irony indicator that we would otherwise show using our voice.
You see, learning a new language is not just a collection of words and correct grammar.
There are certain cultural nuances that are often as important as the words we choose to use; sometimes even more important because of the emotional connotation that they carry.
I don’t know if this was a cultural difference or a misused punctuation mark. But it’s better (and safer) not to use quotes when you don’t quote anything.
Of course, my friend’s card did not offend me because I knew that her intentions were good. During the year we’d spent hanging out almost every day, we’d gotten to know each other really well; we had so many great memories.
But I can imagine other people doing the same thing to their bosses, acquaintances, or anyone else whom they haven’t had the chance to get so close to. We all have our cultural backgrounds, and although some words or punctuation marks might look the same, they could actually have a different meaning.
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What is one thing in your own culture that people might not know? Is there anything in the US that you found out was different than you had previously thought? Let me know in the comments.
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