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Communicating Your World Workplace Modern language

Native English speakers

are the world’s worst
communicators
In a room full of non-native speakers, ‘there isn’t any chance of understanding’.
It might be their language, but the message is often lost.

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By Lennox Morrison
31 October 2016

Editor’s Note (29 December 2016): Through the end of the year, BBC
Capital is bringing back some of your favourite stories from 2016.

It was just one word in one email, but it triggered huge financial losses for a
multinational company.
 The message, written in English, was sent by a native speaker to a colleague
for whom English was a second language. Unsure of the word, the recipient
found two contradictory meanings in his dictionary. He acted on the wrong
one.

Months later, senior management investigated why the project had flopped,
costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. “It all traced back to this one word,”
says Chia Suan Chong, a UK-based communications skills and intercultural
trainer, who didn't reveal the tricky word because it is highly industry-specific
and possibly identifiable. “Things spiralled out of control because both parties
were thinking the opposite.”

When such misunderstandings happen, it’s usually

" the native speakers who are to blame. Ironically, they
Suddenly the are worse at delivering their message than people
American or Brit who speak English as a second or third language,
according to Chong.
walks into the room
and nobody can
“A lot of native speakers are happy that English has
understand them - become the world’s global language. They feel they
Chia Suan Chong don’t have to spend time learning another language,”
says Chong. “But… often you have a boardroom full
of people from different countries communicating in
English and all understanding each other and then suddenly the American or
Brit walks into the room and nobody can understand them.”


 "Native speakers of English generally are monolingual and are not very good at tuning into
language variation,” professor Jennifer Jenkins says (Credit: University of Southampton)

The non-native speakers, it turns out, speak more purposefully and carefully,
typical of someone speaking a second or third language. Anglophones, on
the other hand, often talk too fast for others to follow, and use jokes, slang
and references specific to their own culture, says Chong. In emails, they use
baffling abbreviations such as ‘OOO’, instead of simply saying that they will
be out of the office.

“The native English speaker… is the only one who might not feel the need to
accommodate or adapt to the others,” she adds.

Relating to your audience

With non-native English speakers in the majority worldwide, it’s Anglophones

who may need to up their game.

“Native speakers are at a disadvantage when you are

" in a lingua franca situation,” where English is being
Typically, native used as a common denominator, says Jennifer
English speakers Jenkins, professor of global Englishes at the UK’s
University of Southampton. “It’s the native English
dominate meetings
speakers that are having difficulty understanding and
about 90% of the time
making themselves understood.”
- Michael Blattner
Non-native speakers generally use more limited
vocabulary and simpler expressions, without flowery
language or slang. Because of that, they understand one another at face
value. Jenkins found, for instance, that international students at a British
 university understood each other well in English and swiftly adapted to
helping the least fluent members in any group.

‘What the hell is ETA?’

Zurich-based Michael Blattner’s mother tongue is Swiss-German, but

professionally he interacts mostly in English. “I often hear from non-native
colleagues that they do understand me better when listening to me than
when doing so to natives,” says the head of training and proposition, IP
Operations at Zurich Insurance Group.

Jean-Paul Nerriere has devised Globish — a new easier form of English, stripped down to
1,500 words and simple but standard grammar — as a tool (Credit: Jean-Paul Nerriere)

One bugbear is abbreviations.

“The first time I worked in an international context somebody said ‘Eta 16:53’
and I thought ‘What the hell is ETA?’,” says Blattner. “To add to the
confusion, some of the abbreviations in British English are very different from
American English.”
 And then there’s cultural style, Blattner says. When a Brit reacts to a
proposal by saying, “That’s interesting” a fellow Brit might recognise this as
understatement for, “That’s rubbish.” But other nationalities would take the
word “interesting” on face value, he says.

Unusual words, speed of talking and mumbling don’t help, he adds —

especially if the phone or video connection is poor quality. “You start
disengaging and doing something else because there isn’t any chance of
understanding,” he says.

At meetings, he adds, “typically, native English speakers dominate about

90% of the time. But the other people have been invited for a reason.”

Dale Coulter, head of English at language course

" provider TLC International House in Baden,
English speakers with Switzerland, agrees: “English speakers with no other
no other language language often have a lack of awareness of how to
speak English internationally.”
often lack awareness
of how to speak
In Berlin, Coulter saw German staff of a Fortune 500
English company being briefed from their Californian HQ via
internationally - Dale video link. Despite being competent in English, the
Coulter Germans gleaned only the gist of what their
American project leader said. So among themselves
they came up with an agreed version, which might or
might not have been what was intended by the California staff.

“A lot of the information goes amiss,” Coulter says.

When simpler is better

It’s the native speaker who often risks missing out on closing a deal, warns
Frenchman Jean-Paul Nerriere, formerly a senior international marketing
executive at IBM.
 “Too many non-Anglophones, especially the Asians and the French, are too
concerned about not ‘losing face’ — and nod approvingly while not getting
the message at all,” he says.

That’s why Nerriere devised Globish — a distilled form of English, stripped

down to 1,500 words and simple but standard grammar. “It’s not a language,
it’s a tool,” he says. Since launching Globish in 2004 he’s sold more than
200,000 Globish text books in 18 languages.

“If you can communicate efficiently with limited, simple language you save
time, avoid misinterpretation and you don’t have errors in communication,”
Nerriere says.

As an Englishman who’s worked hard to learn

" French, Rob Steggles, senior marketing director for
You need to be short, Europe at telecommunications giant NTT
clear and direct and Communications, has advice for Anglophones. Based
in Paris, Steggles says, “you need to be short, clear
you need to simplify -
and direct and you need to simplify. But there’s a fine
Rob Steggles
line between doing that and being patronising.”

“It’s a tightrope walk,” he adds.

Giving others a chance

When trying to communicate in English with a group of people with varying

levels of fluency, it’s important to be receptive and adaptable, tuning your
ears into a whole range of different ways of using English, Jenkins says.

“People who’ve learned other languages are good at doing that, but native
speakers of English generally are monolingual and not very good at tuning in
to language variation,” she says.
 In meetings, Anglophones tend to speed along at what they consider a
normal pace, and also rush to fill gaps in conversation, according to
Steggles.

“It could be that the non-native speaker is trying to formulate a sentence,” he

says. “You just have to wait a heartbeat and give them a chance. Otherwise,
after the meeting they come up and say, ‘What was all that about?’ Or they
walk away and nothing happens because they haven’t understood.”

He recommends making the same point in a couple of different ways and

asking for some acknowledgement, reaction or action.

“If there’s no participation," Steggles cautions, “you don’t know whether

you’ve been understood or not.”

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