International Communication: Using Slang

"Alright, we're talking about word choice, and something else you want to do with your choice of words and your conversations besides being accurate is you want to avoid things that are indicative of certain cultures. And what I'm talking about are slangs and idioms, and that is for anyone from any culture. Don't use things that would only make sense in your culture. Slang, as you know, is, it's words that represent something else. "Catch you later." Well, am I going to really, am I going to catch you later? No, that's not the literal meaning of the word. It means, "I will meet up with you later. I will talk to you later." You want to avoid those things because that can be very confusing to someone from another culture. Also, idioms. Idioms are kind of like folk wisdom. "Don't put the cart before the horse." You tell that to someone from another culture, "Hey, don't put the cart before the horse!" They might get very confused about carts and horses, and what is it that you're talking about? So keep all of that private language, the things that you say to the people around you that understand exactly what you're talking about, your made-up languages, your slangs, your idioms, keep that out of conversations with people from other cultures."