Quite nice follow-up to yesterday's article about the EU negotiations being even more muddied than strictly necessary by linguistic conventions.
“A lot of native speakers are happy that English has become the world’s global language. They feel they 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.”
“The native English speaker… is the only one who might not feel the need to accommodate or adapt to the others,” she adds.
I do try and avoid British colloquialisms when speaking with non-native colleagues. But it does get frustrating if you've been an expat for a few years.
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.
When a Brit says, "I'm not sure that..." they generally mean, "that was a really dumb thing you just said". Then again I have a Czech colleague who, frustratingly, never believes me if I say I'm not an expert in some specialist area. He thinks I'm being polite when I'm actually trying to say, "I have no idea what you're talking about, make it simpler".
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.
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161028-native-english-speakers-are-the-worlds-worst-communicators
Rhys Taylor English may have its deficiencies, but is there a better international language? I can't imagine we'd be better off using Cantonese, Mandarin, French or ???
ReplyDeleteFarwolaeth i'r saesneg ! Rydw i'n hoffi coffi !
ReplyDeleteJim Slater The problem is not so much about using one specific language (Latin, French, Aramean, Mandarin Chinese and the Lingua Franca Frankenstein monster of a dialect all did the job at varied times and places as well as English today), but adapting how we use said language for international use. In fact, trying to artificially force the use of a "better" language is impractical, as was proven by the Esperanto fiasco.
ReplyDeleteThe "Everyone understands everyone but the native speakers" is something I both saw and heard about, and according to this article, it is far from anecdotal.