For years I have been wondering about this and today I’m bringing the question to you, good readers of chickenmonkeydog.
Watching World Cup Soccer reminded me of a question I’ve had about how teammates who do not share a common language communicate on the field.
When one team has players who do not share a common language, how do they communicate on the field? In the World Cup, I imagine it is less of an issue, since the players on each team are from the same country. However, in most professional leagues each team is made up of players from all over the world.
If David Beckham gets hired by AC Milan, does he need to take Italian language as part of his contract? Even if players do try to pick up the native tongue of the country where they are to play, in the heat of the game do they still have issues with using the newly learned language? When you have more than a few different “native tongues” on one team, does the team try to use a common language? Is there some abbreviated set of terms that teams learn to simplify communication?
The possible solutions are endless, but do you know what solutions are actually used?
I’ve often wondered the same thing. Not only is there the issue of players of one country playing and living in another, but coaches as well.
It has always been my impression that players learn as much as possible of the local language. I imagine they must learn enough to understand basic commands and such for when they are on the pitch.
On the bright side, I think the butt-hit is universal – crosses all sports and geographies.
With the early “Can’t anybody here play this game?” Mets, the shortstop would go into the outfield after shallow pop-ups and yell “I got it”, only to be creamed by an outfielder that only spoke Spanish. One of the coaches told him that “I got it” is “Yo la tengo” in Spanish, so he yelled that the next time he went into the outfield and the Spanish outfielder veered off but he got creamed by another outfielder who didn’t know Spanish.
P.S. This is where the band “Yo La Tengo” got their name.