i'm so delighted that a lot of hard work i've done over the years is suddenly paying off in a delightful friendly way
so far, i've used English, Spanish, Korean, Russian and ASL within the first five days of my new job with folks who spoke little or no English or were sign-exclusive deaf
(although I might've made a bad call with the Russian because they were Ukrainian refugees. Back in college, my Ukrainian friends would roll their eyes at me and respond in Ukrainian which I could usually understand about as well as i understood Russian, so I hope the folks didn't take offense but i'll think twice before doing that again; i'll ask next time instead of presuming.)
i don't speak literally any of these languages fluently but i've learned enough to be friendly in suuuuper quick casual interactions that don't require full on conversation. i know this isn't a big deal at all for people from almost any country that isn't the USA, but for someone who grow up in a Midwest town in the USA and did the work while I was in that Midwest town, i'm really grateful to past me for the foresight.
Also shout out to all the other bone conductor people and our instant in-club super solidarity. So many bone conductor fist bumps, lol!
I've had several Thai and Vietnamese folks come through but I don't know anything! Maybe I'll learn some basics in those next.
