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.
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 did not
to 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.”
Suddenly the American or Brit
walks into the room and nobody can understand them - Chia Suan Chong
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.
“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.”
"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.
Typically, native English
speakers dominate meetings about 90% of the time - Michael Blattner
“Native speakers are at a
disadvantage when you are in a lingua franca situation,” where English is being
used as a common denominator, says Jennifer Jenkins, professor of global
Englishes at the UK’s University of Southampton. “It’s the native English
speakers that are having difficulty understanding and making themselves understood.”
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.”
English speakers with no other
language often lack awareness of how to speak English internationally - Dale
Coulter
Dale Coulter, head of English
at language course provider TLC International House in Baden, Switzerland,
agrees: “English speakers with no other language often have a lack of awareness
of how to speak English internationally.”
In Berlin, Coulter 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.
“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.
You need to be short, clear
and direct and you need to simplify - Rob Steggles
As an Englishman who’s worked
hard to learn French, Rob Steggles, senior marketing director for Europe at
telecommunications giant NTT Communications, has advice for Anglophones. Based
in Paris, Steggles says, “you need to be short, clear and direct and you need
to simplify. But there’s a fine 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.”
