Foreign Languages in the Workplace

[hotdog1846]

Very interesting comments, guys, and all very well taken.

But here's another hypothetical situation.

Susan is born in Outer Mongolia, and by a strange twist of fate ends up in the United States where she gets a job flipping burgers at McDonalds. Because she has tried to learn basic English, she moves up the ladder and becomes a Crew Leader. Her English is OK but not really fluent. Many of the other employees speak Spanish as a Native language; about 25% are actually US natives and English speakers, mostly High School kids that are only there part time.

Management hires 3 new burger flippers and Susan is the Crew Leader and does the training.
Roger was born in the US and speaks fluent English and a little Spanish.
Pablo was born in Mexico and speaks Spanish first but is pretty good with English
Zhing was born in Outer Mongolia, and speaks Outer Mongolian quite well, but poor English.

During the training period, if Zhing is having trouble with something, Susan trains him speaking Outer Mongolian. Pablo gets help from the other Spanish speakers. Roger gets additional help from Susan in her broken English.

2 weeks later, Roger gets less hours because he isn't picking things up fast enough.

Is something wrong with this scenario?

Yes. A big bottle of aspirin should come with the job offer.

 

[SoulSearcher]

But maybe our point of view is different in Europe?

I assure you it is...

 

[BINOWGAYLATER]

Soul Searcher - some drunk gay guy in San Francisco told me --Don't believe everything you read on the internet ... my understanding WAS that native language could/would still be provided - as in that sub paragraph) Also a friend in San Jose commented on the many teachers speaking different languages..
Maybe they were from another planet - IDK.

SayMyName: - learning/knowing / speaking a bunch of languages may make you somewhat intelligent -- but the way you stated it = it seemed like having a bunch of people all around me speaking "foreign" languages - and that, in itself, means nothing. I only need one language to express my creativity..

I'm going back under the bridge now - and I'm not cumming out till dinner's ready.

 

[dynk]

I use to run a detox unit, myself and another nurse knew french..

We had a lot of Spanish patients who constantly spoke spanish in front of the staff. I never asked them not to except in our structured groups.

One day the nurse and I spoke in french in the nurses station and they jumped all over us and called us "prejudiced". All the time they were speaking spanish in front of us. Luckily we had some Spanish Counselors and one cut in and told them off in Spanish. He said he told them that it was appropriate for us to speak french if they insisted on speaking spanish.

 

[Blueboy369]

I'm American of Puerto Rican decent and I worked as an Account Executive in New York, at a company that was owned by a lovely French woman. She frequently had interns that came in from France that hardly spoke English at all. I became Friends with "Laurent" even though he had trouble communicating in English. Then came the day that he heard me communicating in Spanish to someone and began to speak to me in fluent Spanish. He told me that his parents would take him on frequent trips to Spain and suddenly there we were, an American and a Frenchmen communicating in Spanish.

 

[fetaby]

I'm American of Puerto Rican decent and I worked as an Account Executive in New York, at a company that was owned by a lovely French woman. She frequently had interns that came in from France that hardly spoke English at all. I became Friends with "Laurent" even though he had trouble communicating in English. Then came the day that he heard me communicating in Spanish to someone and began to speak to me in fluent Spanish. He told me that his parents would take him on frequent trips to Spain and suddenly there we were, an American and a Frenchmen communicating in Spanish.

That is the sweetest thing I've read all day.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9SHL9g48j8[/ame]

 

[kevbo]

Ugh, this reminds me of high school when the Hmong students would make fun of me in their language right in front of me...

 

[Elwood]

This issue comes up a lot here in Quebec because the main language is french, however there still is a part of the population (mostly older) who do not speak it.

I think it all depends on the circumstances, for instance I worked with Americans a lot. There have been times where I will be in a conversation with an American and another Quebecer who's english might not of been that great. Because the french Quebecer was not comfortable with his use of english, he would speak french to me but try his best to speak english to the American. Out of courtesy I would always translate to the American the french part of the conversation.

Then there is the other scenario, I also worked with a Greek Canadian brother and sister duo and they were upper management, and they would switch into greek no matter who they were with when they didn't want the other people to not know what they were saying. In my books that is just plain rude and would always piss me off. I didn't bother me that they may be talking about me, it was more that I just think that is rude because it was so obvious that they didn't want you to know what they were talking about. Again this scenario usually took place in a business environment, and the conversation were business related. Very tacky in my opinion.

 

[irydion]

I think it's wrong to force people to speak in the language they don't want or can talk in. It's a workplace, so usual rules of politeness in friendly enviroment do not apply. Let people talk any language they want. The discomfort of someone hearing an unknown language is smaller than discomfort of someone forced to speak some other language.

If you feel bad about someone speaking in language you don't understand...:
1) it's your problem
2) you can fix it by learning this language.

 

[cklover]

This issue comes up a lot here in Quebec because the main language is french, however there still is a part of the population (mostly older) who do not speak it.

I think it all depends on the circumstances, for instance I worked with Americans a lot. There have been times where I will be in a conversation with an American and another Quebecer who's english might not of been that great. Because the french Quebecer was not comfortable with his use of english, he would speak french to me but try his best to speak english to the American. Out of courtesy I would always translate to the American the french part of the conversation.

Then there is the other scenario, I also worked with a Greek Canadian brother and sister duo and they were upper management, and they would switch into greek no matter who they were with when they didn't want the other people to not know what they were saying. In my books that is just plain rude and would always piss me off. I didn't bother me that they may be talking about me, it was more that I just think that is rude because it was so obvious that they didn't want you to know what they were talking about. Again this scenario usually took place in a business environment, and the conversation were business related. Very tacky in my opinion.

So far, Elwood, I think you've had the best response in this thread.

I've worked in international environments where everyone got along because everyone spoke the language that everyone else in the group understood. That language was most often English. The reason for this is simple. The second language most taught in non-English speaking countries is English. Those whose mother tongue is English have the problem of what secondary language to learn. There are a great many languages in this world and what language should a native English speaker choose to learn.

In this international environment I've seen and heard members of one country tell others from their own country to speak English when in a mixed group.

Just as an anecdote, I do speak a second language. When working in an international environment I told the people that I work with that I do speak a second language. They didn't really believe me. It was quite interesting though to listen in on their conversations when they didn't think I could understand them. Not surprisingly they did a lot of complaining about people that speak only English.

I've tried to learn French, but not very successfully. The best I ever did was when I had a group of French speaking friends. At first they were embarrassed to speak French in front of me, but I encouraged them to speak French so that I could try to pick up the language. I was making some progress, but then we ended up going our separate ways and I eventually lost all that I had learned.

 

[Maskedman]

English is not the common language everywhere in US and spanish is quickly becoming the second unofficial language. The best thing to do is to learn spanish.

do it
spanish is more easy than english

 

[Lube]

This issue comes up a lot here in Quebec because the main language is french, however there still is a part of the population (mostly older) who do not speak it.

I think it all depends on the circumstances, for instance I worked with Americans a lot. There have been times where I will be in a conversation with an American and another Quebecer who's english might not of been that great. Because the french Quebecer was not comfortable with his use of english, he would speak french to me but try his best to speak english to the American. Out of courtesy I would always translate to the American the french part of the conversation.

Then there is the other scenario, I also worked with a Greek Canadian brother and sister duo and they were upper management, and they would switch into greek no matter who they were with when they didn't want the other people to not know what they were saying. In my books that is just plain rude and would always piss me off. I didn't bother me that they may be talking about me, it was more that I just think that is rude because it was so obvious that they didn't want you to know what they were talking about. Again this scenario usually took place in a business environment, and the conversation were business related. Very tacky in my opinion.

Another vote for Elwood's great post.

Speak a second language only if everybody knows it. If you need to, because you don't know a certain word or phrase, make sure someone translates it.

Otherwise it comes across as talking in a secret code. Not a way to engender good camaraderie.

At home or in social environments (or even at lunch at work), speak whatever language you want. Please! We need to prevent English (or Chinese or Spanish) from taking over all other languages. Diversity is good. But in a work environment, everybody needs to know what's going on.

 

[chatolandia]

If I am having a private, personal conversation with someone whose first language I speak, I do use that language...


if I am having a professional conversation with someone whose language I speak, I do the same.


if I am at a meeting where people speak many languages, I use English, since it's the most common language in that environment.

but private conversations are private, so I would use whatever language I feel most comfortable with

 

[LilBit]

It's possible to converse in a foreign language without being rude. You just need to acknowledge the presence of the people who don't speak the language so as to make it clear that you're not excluding them.

An example: I teach Arabic. The ARAB 101 faculty would meet on a weekly basis throughout the semester; there were three of us: me, a Palestinian, and a Lebanese man. I speak English and French fluently, and I know enough Modern Standard Arabic to get by. The Palestinian speaks English, MSA, Palestinian Arabic, and Egyptian Arabic, and he understands Lebanese. The Lebanese guy speaks English, French, Lebanese Arabic, and Egyptian Arabic. We held our meetings in English because it's the language in which all three of us are most conversant. However, the Lebanese guy has the weakest English of the three of us, so sometimes he'd need one of us to explain something in a different language. If this happened, either I would tell our Palestinian colleague, "I'm going to explain this in French," or the Palestinian would turn to me and ask if it was okay for him to explain in Egyptian. That little courtesy goes a long way.

Another anecdote: when I was working in Switzerland, the official language of my employer was English. However, the secretaries and research assistants were mostly native speakers of French. We (the assistants) would have weekly meetings; according to the policies of the organization, these meetings should have been held in English. However, by mutual agreement, we decided to hold them in French. Whenever a new assistant was hired, the first thing we'd do at our weekly meeting was to confirm that it was okay to hold the meeting in French. If there was a non-Francophone at the meeting, we'd switch to English so as not to alienate anyone.

Of course, in that office, it wasn't at all unusual for people to have conversations in three or four different languages. It was kind of fun, and it helped me improve my comprehension of spoken Italian, Spanish, and German.

 

[The Warmth]

do it
spanish is more easy than english

I would hope so, your grasp of English grammar is atrocious.

Spanish isn't going to be taking over English as the lingua franca of the world anytime soon, sorry to disappoint you. In international business, science, technology, aviation, and diplomacy, it is English that is used as a neutral, international language. As someone already stated, it's also the most commonly taught second language in the world. Until another nation comes close to matching the economic or general influence of the US (and subsequently the UK), English is here to stay.

Population number does not equate to influence, by the way.

 

[Maskedman]

i only said spanish is more easy... english is fucking difficult

 

[Ram]

Apabila kami bercakap dalam bahasa lain, orang yang tak boleh cakap bahasa itu boleh pergi makan mati dan pergi jamban. Kamu semua di thread terlalu busuk. Pu ki mak kau ada banyak bulu, macam monyet. Muka kau macam bontok babi.

Sesiapa yang tidak tahu apa saya sedang bercakap boleh hisap konek saya.

 

[MercuryJones]

Thumbs up to Elwood and LilBit's posts.

 

[LilBit]

Apabila kami bercakap dalam bahasa lain, orang yang tak boleh cakap bahasa itu boleh pergi makan mati dan pergi jamban. Kamu semua di thread terlalu busuk. Pu ki mak kau ada banyak bulu, macam monyet. Muka kau macam bontok babi.

Sesiapa yang tidak tahu apa saya sedang bercakap boleh hisap konek saya.

تفو عليك يا ابن كلبة. أمك اكبر شرموطة في العالم

 

[irydion]

LilBit, that's nasty!