My father Erwin Thompson--musician and raconteur-- tells this true story of old-fashioned square-dance music--when it was just music.
Janet
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There was this fiddler back some years ago who was learning. He had one piece that he played quite well, but it was a struggle for him to learn. He hadn't gotten around to learning any more.

The neighborhood was well aware of his abilities and limitations. When he went to a dance, he always took his fiddle and some time in the evening he would play his one piece, "The Gray Eagle."

All went well until one fatal evening when he was the ONLY FIDDLER THERE!

So he played "The Gray Eagle."

Everybody knew his situation. When they were getting plans for what to play for the next square dance of the evening, they would discuss all of the various choices without anyone expecting him to play any of them. Then someone would come up with a great idea. "Why don't you play that Gray Eagle!"

The crowd would hail it as a great new idea and the fiddler would play "The Gray Eagle!"

Tact, and fitting courtesy and ingenuity into social situations that could have been embarrassing.

It's perfectly possible to not know a word of a language, but to seem as if you know the language and culture well if you know the symbolic utterances and music of a language...it's rhythms, rising and falling.

If you know when to make sounds of sympathy and appreciation.

If you know when to exclaim in amazement or outrage.

You can love and protest and join in the communal conversation by floating on the subtext of the sound, the music of the language...the seeming nonsense sounds are the door to feeling...and becoming part of the heart dialogue.

Aka-ka! [followed by a tongue click and an incline of your head] will get you far in Botswana...even if you know nothing more of the Setswana language.

Try this approach wherever you happen to be--even at home--and see what happens. Tune out the meaning of the words and listen to the music of the language flowing around you.