All 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 spiraled 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 are worse at delivering their message than people who speak
English as a second or third language, according to Chong.
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.
"The native English speaker is the only one who might not feel the need to accommodate or adapt to the others,‖ she adds.
Non-native speakers generally use more limited vocabulary and simpler expressions, without flowery language or slang. And then there's cultural style,
Zurich-based Michael Blattner says. When a Brit reacts to a proposal by saying
"That's interesting‖, a fellow Brit might recognize this as understatement for, "That's rubbish.‖ But other nationalities would take the word "interesting‖ on face value, he says.
In Berlin, Dale Coulter, head of English at one language course provider, saw
German staff of a Fortune 500 company being briefed from their Californian HQ via video link. Despite being competent in English, the 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.
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.
"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‖, says Jenkins, professor of global
Englishes at the UK's University of Southampton.
"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 Rob Steggles, senior marketing director for Europe at a telecommunications company.
He recommends making the same point in a couple of different ways and asking for some acknowledgement, reaction or action.
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