IRELAND-DUBLIN

Having to speak English in my everyday life was not a new experience for me. I have already been on an exchange during High School. Also back in Liechtenstein, I was always living with people who didn’t know German so I was used to speaking English on a daily basis.

I often just speak without thinking too much about if I’m actually saying things right. Because I think I’d rather say something and usually people will be able to understand me. But sometimes I would wish that people would correct me if I’m saying something wrong.

Here in Dublin, I’m living with an Irish and two Americans. Several times I had a situation where I would try to say something and I would say the word in a way that shows that I’m unsure about it, but they would never try to help me find the word. But I think they just have a different approach to foreign languages or to be more concrete they are just not used to speaking another language and don’t know how I feel speaking a different language.

But from all of this, I learned to specifically ask about words and to tell me if I’m saying things wrong.

Looking back I’m very happy that I already took an English Studio in Liechtenstein. Because it helped me a lot to already have a little bit of a vocabulary of architectural-specific words.

Because talking about study specific things was definitely the hardest thing. I found it very difficult in the beginning to describe and discuss my design ideas with my group and tutors as many architectural-specific words were missing. This became easier and easier over the course of the semester and I think that’s also where I profited and learned the most. Because English is such a universal language I think it’s very important to know as many terms in English as possible.

There were two things I had problems with until the end. One of them was to label the materials of components as they are very specific and can’t just be translated from German just using a “normal” translating tool.

The other thing which was very hard was that there is a Gaelic word that would be used every now and then. It’s usually something very specific or just a name of something, but there is no chance that I can understand Gaelic. I got as far as that I can read a name of a Town in Gaelic and guess which town it is in English but also this only works out sometimes.

I know that I’m definitely less precise and spontaneous in English. If someone is just saying something out of the blue I often have to ask people to repeat what they said, because I just have to be more focused to understand English. I do really remark that after a long day in the Studio with a lot of people talking because it makes me really tired.

An interesting thing that I noticed was that I could connect very well with one of my tutors who is also not a native English speaker. Obviously, he has been living in Ireland for quite some time and he knows a lot more architecture-related words. But different from native-speaking people he would help me way more with words.

A thing I have noticed when I speak in German is that sometimes I translate English sentences literally into German. This especially happens if I’m telling about things I have experienced in English.

After all, I didn’t have any bigger issues in communication. Irish accent can be very strong but I managed to understand most of it. I learned a lot of new architecture-related words which will be beneficial in the future.