Clarity and the question of how the cookie crumbles

By Michael Skapinker
Friday, January 11, 2008


If native speakers of English are not to become international corporate pariahs, they will need to learn how to speak global English – in other words, to communicate with non-native speakers.

Resentment at the complexity of native speakers' English is widespread in international business. During a study carried out at Kone Elevators of Finland, reported in Business Communication Quarterly in 2002, one Finnish manager blurted out: “The British are the worst . . . It is much more difficult to understand their English than that of other nationalities. When we non-native speakers of English talk, it is much easier to understand. We have the same limited vocabulary.”

How can native speakers of English make themselves more comprehensible and more likeable? The most obvious way is to learn someone else's language. This is not necessarily so that you can speak to your non-English speaking colleagues, although that would help. The problem is that most business meetings these days contain people speaking several languages, so that speaking French, or Finnish, would be ruder than speaking incomprehensible English.


The great benefit of learning other languages is that you have some idea of what non-native speakers are up against. However, news this week that fewer than half of English schoolchildren are learning a foreign language suggests that this is not going to be a profitable route for many.

So what should native English-speakers do to make themselves better understood? First, slow down, but not to the point where members of your audience think you are patronising them. Second, avoid idiomatic and metaphorical expressions: that's the way the cookie crumbles, people in glass houses, and the like.

Jokes are a difficult area. You will not forget the silence that follows one that is found baffling. On the other hand, when jokes work, they can be a huge success with a non-native speaking audience. If you have learnt other languages, you will know that very few achievements are as satisfying as understanding your first foreign joke. Try a few out with your non-native speaking audience; you will soon learn which ones are worth repeating.

It is often unnecessary to avoid longer words such as “association” and “nationality”, which are common to the Romance languages and will be widely understood in Europe and Latin America.

Listen to verbal responses for signs of whether you have been understood or not. Make sure your non-native speaking colleagues have the chance to talk; they will often be paraphrasing your words in an attempt to satisfy themselves that they have grasped what you said.

Always remember that the greatest friend of the non-native speaker is repetition. Find more than one way of getting your point across and summarise frequently.