Comments by "Helmuth Schultes" (@helmuthschultes9243) on "American Reacts to "Americans Trying to Understand Aussies" 🤣😂" video.

  1. Not so much general discussion, BUT in car engineering talking of the car 'Bonnet' and 'Boot' has caused many questioning looks in Japan and Korea who are used to the US terminology. On the other hand, I was left very disconnected in my first meetings I Japan, while the car company Australian engineer and Japanese engineer teams got deeply into two critical items needing clarification. Talk concentrated for hours around spoken terms "UH-CHI-CHI" and "EM-CHI-CHI". Very baffling I was totally left without any context of what critical parts were being sorted out, not that it concerned the engine management computer that was my domain. Well I wonder how many would have clicked easily to the topic? Maybe spelling will help, for me paperwork initially did not help as it was all in Japanese. But by evening I had a light bulb event, and finally understood. UCC and MCC were in discussion, anybhelp yet? The references are "Under Chassis Catalytic " converter and "Manifold Catalytic Converter". It turned out they were using their phonetic spelling of the abbreviated item names. There were other car parts where common abbreviations led to some need for explanation, but after the above case I caught on quickly and usually sorted things out in my mind. I did make a serious matter of confusion, on discussion about the circuitry of their engine computer module. To explain some questions I posed the senior engineers needed help from some design team members. I had the circuits to study fir a day and only sought clarifications and confirmation of my understanding of their design. Three young engineers were called into the discussion room and spent some 5 minutes explaining the circuit to the senior engineer all in Japanese with spread circuit diagram. I sat through the discussion watching. On then trying to explain to me, the senior engineer had some difficulties and checked back with the juniors a few times. To save time, I offered to explain my understanding and let them offer confirmation. Sadly that went so well, they seemed to get the impression that I fully understood Japanese, which I do not. Thereafter ALL matters between the meeting members and associates no longer took place at the discussion table, but quietly aside at far from the table, or even out of the room. Making sure I could not gain anything from such 'private' discussions. I raised the topic with one of the senior engineers and explained the noted change, and that really I have no Japanese language skill. I did get well trusted and even asked to help on some technical matters they were having problems with, inspite it covered several "secret" projects no non-company people were not to know about. During ensuing project I even rewrote some of their system software to fix field problems of several of their car projects that also showed in the project I supported them on. But I had to let their programmer take credit, to let my changes be adopted. Language differences can be serious issues and need careful handling, let's call it DIPLOMACY, or wars might be started.
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