For two day’s running now I’ve gone out with my co-workers for lunch and regretted it both times. If the wall is about as close to a conversation partner as I’m gonna get, I’m better off eating alone. But it got me to thinking about all the variables that go into making communication possible, or not as the case may be.

I work as an editor in Korea. Every day I look over stories written by non-native English speakers, polishing here, tweaking there, all the while conscious of two things: their egos and the insecurity that comes with operating in a foreign language.

Over pots of boiling stew and shots of soju, my colleagues broke off into conversation. Not nearly fluent in Korean, I would occasionally interrupt to ask what they were talking about, hoping to work my way into the dialogue. No luck. Then — and this isn’t the first time — they started speaking to me in Korean. And it gave me the feeling that they were trying to turn the tables on me. After putting up with my edits all day, they wanted to use my inability in the Korean language to put me in my place. It worked.

Walking back to the office, I mulled over the little tug-of-war that had just played out over lunch. Was my speaking English at the table seen by them as trying to take the upper hand in the conversation? Is it fair of me to expect that people use English? On the other hand, is it fair of them to expect me to master Korean? Lord knows there’s plenty of folks in the U.S. and elsewhere who want to make English or French or whatever language is dominant a prerequisite to citizenship. A fascist idea if you ask me.

I see language as a tool to facilitate communication, not as a weapon to weild over those less fluent. I’ve got friends who do not speak more than a few passing words of English and yet somehow between my caveman Korean and their stray vocabulary we manage to communicate, sometimes more so than when I am with fellow native-English speakers. Not so with the bunch I work with.

I suppose in the end the key to good communication doesn’t really lie in language at all, but simply in the desire to communicate. That rule of thumb, I believe, can be extended to a wide range of affairs, from disarmament talks involving North Korea and the U.S. to luncheon encounters with disgruntled co-workers.

As an aside, over lunch today an older Korean gentleman sitting across from me struck up a conversation. It was a little joint that serves rice porridge, good on cold winter days when you’re a little hung over. He said not many foreigners – hear that word a lot here – ventured into the place and complemented me on my Korean – hear that a lot here too.

I’m still not convinced he wasn’t gay, especially since he kept throwing out Italian and French words and raised his eyebrows when I told him I was from San Francisco. Still, his English was impeccable and his Chinese wasn’t bad either. He said a person who speaks more than one language has more than one life. I’m inclined to believe him.