It is safe to say that English is the lingua-franca of the business world. Globally there are 380 million native English speakers and 80% of the information stored on our computers is in English.
Does this mean a native English speaker can run a business abroad without making any effort to study the language and culture of the country they are in? Can those of us who count English as our mother tongue rely on the rest of the world to make communicating across cultures easy for us?
Of course the simple answer to these questions is yes. It can be easy to live in an expatriate bubble and rely on interpreters whenever a language barrier comes up. However this attitude to cross-cultural communication causes us to miss out on a lot. Experiencing and learning about a culture entirely different to our own is fascinating and exciting. An exchange of language and culture between two people is beneficial to both sides. It causes us to celebrate what is good in each other’s worlds and to question what is not so good in our own.
It can take years to master a foreign language and is arguably impossible to reach the level of “native speaker” in a language that is not your mother tongue. This does not however give us an excuse to opt out. Professionally speaking, English will probably remain the predominant language globally but learning the language of our colleagues is both respectful and rewarding. The whole process bridges cultural divides and takes relationships to a deeper level.
Having lived in France, Germany and Jordan, one of the best parts about each of these experiences has been studying the language and the friendships that come about as a result of this.