When we were children, making friends was easier. Most of the kids we
met grew up in the same town and so they were on our wavelength. Then
the years went by. We grew older. We moved away. Our backgrounds, our
experiences, our goals, our lifestyles became diverse. Thus, we fell off each
others wavelengths.
Wouldnt it be great to have a magic surfboard to help you hop right
back on everybodys wavelength whenever you wanted? Here it is, a
linguistic device that gets you riding on high rapport with everyone you
meet. If you stand on a mountain cliff and shout hello-oh across the valley,
your identical hello-oh thuders back at you. I call the technique Echoing
because, like the mountain, you echo your conversation partners precise
words.
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How to Make Them Feel That Youre Like Family 177
It All Started Across the Ocean
In many European countries, youll hear five, ten, or more laguages
within the language. For example, in Italy, the Sicilians from the south
speak a dialect that seems like gobbledygook to northern Italians. In an
Italian restaurant, I once overheard a diner discover his waiter was also
from Udine, a town in northeastern Italy where they speak the Friulano
dialect. The diner stood up and hugged the waiter like he was a long-lost
brother. They started babbling in a tongue that left the other Italian waiters
shrugging.
In America we have dialects, too. We just arent conscious of them. In
fact we have thousands of different words, depending on our region, our
job, our interests, and our upbringing. Once, when traveling across the
country, I tried to order a soda like a Coke or 7-Up in a highway diner. It
took some explaining before the wairess understood I wanted what she
called a pop. Perhaps because the English-speaking world is so large,
Americans have a wider choice of words for the same old stuff than any
language Ive encountered.
Family members find themselves speaking alike. Friends use the same
words, and associates in a company or members in a club talk alike.
Everyone you meet will have his or her own language that subliminally
distinguishes them from outsiders. The words are all English, but they vary
from area to area, industry to indutry, and even family to family.
The Linguistic Device That Says Were on the Same Wavelength
ooja
(Ooja)
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