Part 1 : Bases

Accepting Biais :
I am not sharing my gender and my nationality here just to talk about my life, but to introduce the topic. Here, as you read that I am french and a girl, what images, what ideas popped into your mind ? If you suddenly had some pictures of hot girls, Paris, french kiss, sensual accent and such thing, you just discovered what I’m going to talk in the first point.
We all are raised with some ideas about the other people, their gender, their nationality, how they are supposed to be. For example, in France, we say that UK folks are some snobbish people who will stop everything they might do at 5PM because “it’s tea time”. I saw you smiling ! But.. no matter what you think about it, you, me and your neighbour have been bathed in those (stupid) popular belief all our life and while we cannot avoid them, we have to understand that when we meet someone for the first time and come to know about them, we will have a lot of preconceptions to fight against (and trust me, sometimes it isn’t that easy).
A fellow foreigner RPer probably met some other people before you, he will come with some luggages and in those there are probably some bad experiences related to all those who like to jeer others for their grammar rather than spending 1mn to read the content of the sentence. At the same time, you come with your own luggages and knowledge about that person’s nationality, all those biais like “Oh she’s french, french are rude” (Yes. I was told those sort of things more than once) can become a problem if you don’t pay attention to them.
Those pasts experiences will color every single of your exchange with each others, and you cannot stop that. The only thing you can do is accept this terrible truth and so, always have a second regard on your own reaction - even after the situation is long gone - to know if at this time you took a sentence badly and read some implies because of your partner culture / nationality / gender / hair color.


Acknowledging someone’s difference :
This goes for the native speaker and the non native speaker. Because you’ll meet a lot of people in that game, you’ll have to stay vigilant when you’ll meet someone new as they might not be from the same country. But it’s not always easy to say nor to ask if your partner is a native speaker, so here are some small tips to help you :

• Time for answering : We’re all needed more or less time to answer to something IC. With some time, you’ll know more about your RP partner’s pace, but usually foreigners are slower.
  
• Sentence structure : When you face someone making constantly the same grammar mistake, it can both be a foreigner or a native who doesn’t bother. So I suggest you to pay attention on the sentence structure instead. Depending on the country, the way the sentence is made is completely different and not always obvious for a foreigner.
  
• Vocabulary : Sometimes you meet someone whose english is really nice and the only way you might spot the fact he’s not native is his limited vocabulary. We RPer are using a wider vocabulary range than most of people, but, as a foreigner, you come by with a HUGE handicap : You will always have less vocabulary than someone who is native speaker. If sentences are often seem similar, the same words to describe close situations etc. You might be in front of a foreigner.
  
• Misunderstanding : Subtles sentences might lead to misunderstanding more easily. While a native speaker will have no problem to guess the implies and to have a general image of the scene close to what his native speaker partner is describing, it’s not always the case for a foreigner (I’ll explain this more in another party).

In any case, you cannot judge a situation quickly and I encourage you to not ask your partner if he’s a non native speaker unless it’s really necessary. Why ? Because if the person is a native speaker, he might take your question as an offence. And if your partner isn’t native, he might think that his english is fucked up and lose some self confidence.
That doesn’t mean that you have to ignore the fact your partner might be a foreigner and so to continue speaking as if the one in front of you would understand everything you will say. I’m not telling you to not use your usual range of vocabulary (in fact it helps us a lot as it’s the best way for us to learn some new words) but to avoid such things as acronym (our nightmare) and text messages. This might seem dumb, but trust me, it helps a lot when we don’t have to deal with those two things or it becomes a translation in english to translate after in our language.. Ew.


How to not be an arse :
Here some people will smirk and will think “Hey, it’s obvious, I just have to not say to the guy ‘you dumb ? How can you not have understood that’ lul” . Well no. Hurting someone is something easy, particularly when that person will endanger themself by going out of their way and try to RP with you. I know that you’re not a big monster in front of your screen and you’re probably a caring person whose last goal is to hurt your RP partner, but sometimes we do stuff without even notice them.

• Corrections : Do not pick the person on their grammar / vocabulary / spelling / anything related to english without their consent. I know sometimes it burns your fingers and you think that what you do is for your partner own good but don’t do it. I’ll do a whole section around “how to help your RP partner” later, but for now keep in mind that correcting someone isn’t an easy thing to do and deserve some peculiar attention.
  
• Pace : Respect. Your. Partner. Pace. If you don’t have the patience nor the time to allow your partner to follow their pace, tell them you cannot RP with them right now. Spamming sentences because you think your partner should have had enough time to answer and so doesn’t because they have nothing to say (or whatever reason which can pop in your mind) is a HUGE mistake. Keep in mind that each time you add something, your partner might feel the want to catch up and so will be even longer to answer (and might panic).
  
• Accept the OOC questions : Answer to your partner questions and demands, particularly when they ask some precisions about the scene. I know that some of you like to avoid OOC during their RP session, but if you’re RPing with a foreigner, you might have to OOC more often as the person might need to be sure they understood properly. As the previous point, if you don’t have the patience, avoid to RP with them right now.
  
• Pay attention : If your RP partner’s english is good, you might forget that this person isn’t native and become more tough, less tolerant when that person will tell you that they misunderstood something (oh how many time this happened to me !?). Keep in mind that if suddenly a sentence is weird or not accurate, your partner might have read something else in your words and you have to discuss with them OOC about it. It’s not the end of the world if you have to “reckon” the last 10mn of RP if there were some misunderstandings.

In any case, keep in mind that the person in front of you is extraordinary (yes sir / lady, you’re marvelous). To be able to be in front of you today, to RP with you, they learned your language for years, they are gathering some courage to meet you in a situation which will endanger them (it’s really scary to RP in another language sometimes) and they are making some effort to fight their handicap and to be a part of the story you’re weaving together. Be amazed, that person in front of you deserves it and don’t forget to tell them *nods* .


Building some Self Confidence :
This time I’m addressing more to the non native speakers, but I encourage the native speakers to read this section, this might be interesting for you as well.
Between you and me, we know that meeting some new people isn’t always something easy, we’re going out of our way, out of our comfort zone, not knowing how we will be welcomed. But here are some small tips to make the things going smoother.

• Don’t hide your nationality : Tell them you’re not native speaker as soon as you feel it’s necessary (if your RP partner seems impatient for example). This will help them to be more tolerant. You might also need to be tolerant yourself if they begin to act sillily. Finding the right pace and the right language takes more time when one of the partner is handicapped by their difference of language or culture. Bear with them, they probably want to see this RP working as much as you do.
  
• Precise the time you need : Tell your RP partner if you think you will need more than 5mn to write a sentence. It can be because you know that there are some words you will have to fetch in a dictionary or because you have no idea how your character will react and so you will need more time to write, no matter the reason, tell them. 5mn is my golden rule, because I know my writing pace, I know my character perfectly (dear Ilwe, sometimes you’re dumb and makes me write silly things, love, your player) and I know when what I’ll write will cause me some problem or not. Saying that you will need time will calm them if they are the sort of spamming sentence and you will yourself be less stressed by the idea of giving them a sentence.
  
• Ask some questions : If you have some doubt, if you’re uncertain, ask. Always. Never roll on thinking “Oh I think it might be that.” Better looking dumb 1mn because you didn’t understand something simple rather than going through some misunderstandings.
  
• Facing an arse : If your partner doesn’t seem to want to make some efforts and becomes anal, walk away. Not everybody is able to RP with a foreigner, it asks a lot of patience (particularly at our beginning) and it’s better to simply stop before it damages too much your confidence.
  
• You are amazing : At the end of the day you are and you will remain an amazing person. It’s not important if sometimes you fail. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t manage to find the right word at the right moment. You still made the effort to try and no matter if someone is rude to you and picking on your english, that person doesn’t make any effort on their side. Remind yourself that it’s really easy to mock someone while it’s really hard to gather to courage to try.

Part 2 : Communication
Oh well.. I suppose that people told you so many time before that you need to communicate with your partner that it’s becoming boring. Though, how to communicate with someone who will not always understand fully what you’re saying is another problem. So how to proceed with someone having another culture and / or another native language ?


Did you understand the same thing ?
Are you SURE you and your partner understood the same thing of a situation ? Are you really sure that they managed to say what they wanted to say ? Wonky english means as well that they can fail in RP and say the exact opposite of what they wanted to say. And they won’t always be conscious about it. In the head of your partner, even if they might doubt, they will be sure to have roughly share what they had in mind. And sometimes they are wrong. So here are some tips to detect when it might be the case.

• Wonky english : If your partner’s english suddenly drop down, they might have wanted to share something a bit convoluted and the more a sentence is complicated, the more there are chances for them to not share properly what they have in mind.
  
• Continuity : If the sentence suddenly isn’t in line with the character’s behavior or nature, ask yourself if it’s logical. If it’s not, it might be an english blurp.
  
• Tiredness : That is something that might not really obvious for people talking only one language : Speaking another language is tiring. Really tiring. It asks the non native to be really focused and to process within differents steps (depending on the person skill, it can be : Translate your sentence > checking twice > thinking of an answer > translate the answer > fetching words in a dictionary > checking twice). If suddenly the english seems to be overall under the usual skill of your partner, they are probably tired and it’s better to stop rather than forcing it and going through some misunderstandings.

In any case, don’t take the sentence as it is. I mean.. Don’t do as if the sentence was actually what the person wanted to say. Follow the logic of the RP, the continuity of what happened before. You definitely don’t need to constantly correct the person in front of you and / or to ask them confirmation, though, if you need to do it, please follow those few rules.

• If you can correct yourself, don’t talk about it : As I said, you don’t need to ask every single time what the person wanted to say. Answer as if the person wrote the sentence properly. It doesn’t matter if the english is wonky and sometimes inaccurate as long as you can extract what the person wanted to say.
  
• Take it on yourself : Use “I” rather than “you”. Saying “I don’t understand, can you explain to me ?” will be welcomed with less stress than “Did you wanted to say this ?” . This is only some communication tip, talk about yourself when you don’t understand something, otherwise the person might right away be stressed over their english abilities.
  
• No lesson : Even if you’re tempted to, don’t change the discussion on to some english lesson. You’re together for RPing and there is nothing worse to break immersion than this.
  
• Keep it in mind : Try to remember what caused some problems before, this might happen again.

Of course, the non native speaker can also have some problems to understand fully what is said or described during a scene, this is a non exhaustive list of what might cause some problem : Nuances, implies, idioms, irony, accents, second level.
Keep in mind that the person in front of you RP with the tool he has and those nuances aren’t taught in class. From the moment you will accept to RP with someone not sharing the same nationality and / or the same culture, you also accept that you will have some "imperfect RP".


How to stop a derailing train
Sometimes, you won’t catch right away that there were some communication problem. It will happen. Maybe more than once. And maybe you will notice it after a few hours or even a few days. If that misunderstanding didn’t cause too many damages, keep that in mind for the next time in case it happens again. But if the consequences are dreadful IC or OOC, it's time to courageously try and stop the derailing train.

• Stop the discussion : Just stop it right now, don't let the things escalate and just state OOC that there might be some misunderstanding somewhere.
  
• It's not anybody's fault : Don't try to look and see who began to derail, it's not important at all and trying that might only lead to some more disagreements or worse. Best is to think that, in the end, when there are some problems, it's always 50/50 as the communication goes both side.
  
• Time to take a decision : When the consequences of some misunderstandings are problematic, you have to decide together if you want to retcon it or to just correct it. It seems obvious here that you have to decide that with the person you're rping with but here make sure that everybody understand the same thing. Talking another language is tricky and misunderstanding can happen twice.

"Nobody is judging you"
This have to be repeated over and over again until you have it printed in your brain. Nobody will judge you if you do a mistake, if you recognize it, nobody will laugh at you and if you face someone doing so and is not gently teasing you ? Leave. If someone hurt you by teasing you a bit too much ? Tell them.
Talking another language is difficult, non native speaker often have met a lot of arses before talking to you and sometimes laughing about that is difficult. It's unfortunately something you will have to deal with when you RP with non native speaker : Sometimes they are a bit sensitive. So when you will talk about something related to the language, don't forget to reassure the person in front of you, it might sound a bit dumb, but reassuring them is probably the best thing you can do and you will help to heal some old wounds at the same time !


Short time retcon acceptance :
I talked about it earlier, but when you are RPing together with a non native speaker, you have to accept that some short times retcon will sometimes be necessary. But what is exactly retconning and how to practice it smartly ?
Retroactive continuity (or Retcon) is the alteration of previously established facts in the continuity of a fictional work, says Wikipedia. On basis, it means that you will scarp what just happened between your character and the one of your partner(s). It can be useful when you just reached a dead end because of some communication problems.
Now the problem isn't the fact you will crop something out of the scene, but more how you will reconnect after. If you and your partner are comfortable replaying again a scene, it's all ok, but honestly it's not that easy to do. Retconning will ask you to go through some OOC communication to sort how the events should have gone rather than what happened. And you will need to forget all the bad stuff retconned (and it's harder than it seems).
If that ever happen, take your time to sort the problem or it will be some sort of ghost howling at you every time the RP you retconned will appear in some discussion.