Once I mentioned the story of a friend getting something made for me to give my daughter a present, and then not letting me pay back. Writing about that made me think about problem of communicating feelings, particularly in cross-cultural situations. Let me explain.

If I say to a fellow English-speaker, “I know how you feel,” what I am actually saying is that I can imagine myself in the same position, and therefore can imagine how I would feel. But my friend could perfectly correctly reply, “No you don’t! you can’t.” In truth we can communicate how strongly we feel, but we can not communicate exactly what we feel.

But if we come from the same linguistic and cultural background, the match can be close enough.

Culture and language can’t be separated, and I think that we have the feelings that are recognized in our culture and therefore represented in our language. One might say that we feel the things that our language allows us to express. So when it comes to trying to explain feelings to someone of a different mother tongue, the difficulties are huge.

I could not explain to my friend how I felt about her not letting me repay her, because Chinese culture, it seems, does not recognize the same feelings on such occasions.

She could understand the words that I was using, but ____________________________.

Some time ago, I was going up in the lift, and a colleague with whom I merely have a nodding acquaintance was offering round some sweetmeat. I knew that I really could not eat it , so I refused politely, only to be told that I was making her lose face.

I have no idea how serious the colleague was being. I sincerely hope that her comment was more of the nature of a standard response in that kind of situation.

Causing someone to lose face is a serious social mistake. We have to do all we can to learn the types of situations in which it happens, and to try to avoid them. But we can only know about losing face, we can’t feel losing face, as the term is merely a literal translation of Chinese, not one that is native to English.

1. What is the best title of the passage? (Please answer within 10 words.)

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2. Which sentence in the passage can be replaced by the following one?

If we are of the same culture and language, we can share similar opinions and thoughts

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3. Please fill in the blank in the sixth paragraph with proper words or phrases to complete the sentence. (Please answer within 10 words.)

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4. What should you learn from this passage? (Please answer within 30 words.)

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5. Translate the underlined sentence in the last paragraph into Chinese.

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