Featured Post: With the Rise of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, How Relevant Is English? (Part 2)

by Andrés T. Tapia -

Paradoxically, as I discussed in Part 1, as the US sees its economic hegemony decline and the BRIC countries bulk up their economic muscle, the use of English as a business trade language becomes more and not less important. Here in Part 2 I explore this paradox’s additional counterintuitive implications:

• even as English becomes more used, the need for English speakers to be multilingual will increase
• there will be a heightened debate about what a native English speaker is
• accent when speaking English will matter more and less
• there will be a growing rivalry between English and Chinese as the language of business

Let’s look at the first two now. I will share thoughts on the final two in the next installment on this topic.

Even as English Becomes More Used, the Need to Be Multilingual Will Increase

As the world becomes even more reliant on English, it does not mean there is free ride for native English speakers. In fact, the strengthening of English skills on the part of  English-as-a-second-language speakers could lull English-only speakers into believing that inclusive communication is happening.  The growing use of a common language will definitely improve but not fully bridge the gap.  Monolingual speakers will be increasingly at  a disadvantage as conversations move from straightforward logistical coordination and knowledge sharing to the nuances of negotiation, relationship building, and influence.

For example, English is a less emotive language given its Anglo-American cultural roots compared to say Portuguese, Russian, Italian, and Spanish. Take the simple punctuation issue of exclamation marks. In English one exclamation mark at the end of the statement is enough. In Spanish the sentence is grammatically incorrect if in addition to the one on the end there is not an upside down exclamation mark (¡) at the beginning. ¡That’s right!

Small thing, you may think. Well, behind that ¡ are expectations about how to express emotion, how to establish relationships, how to prioritize work — because when the cultural preference of expressing emotion careens into the cultural preference to hide it, the different parties will revert to their native language to fortify their positions. Monolingual speakers will be at a distinct disadvantage, and not even know it, as their multilingual counterparts switch between languages in order to deliver the mot juste, the most perfect word, to best influence the outcome in their favor.

There Will Be a Heightened Debate about What a Native English Speaker Is

Saying that English may become more important in a more diverse and global world is not the same as saying that American or British English will become more important.  However, currently most business English language instruction is created by British and American companies and, guess what?, their recordings of the English to imitate happens to be British or American English. 

This state of affairs is starting to be challenged. The nature of a trade language whether it be Swahili or English is that it becomes widespread precisely because people  from an increasing number of cultures start to use it as their own. And with that come pronunciations and an increasing number of words that are non-American and non-British but are perfectly accepted English words.  For example, when Americans go to Chipotle and they order a “burrito with salsa” would they say they just ordered in Spanish? Likely not.  So if not, what is the correct pronunciation of “burrito” and “salsa” now that they have become English words too? Would I tell a native English speaker who does not speak Spanish that their “buh/rei/toe” and “sahl/sah” is wrong but my “boo/rree/toh” with the trilling r’s is right? Comprende?

Now let’s reverse it and say we then headed to a hot dog stand with an East LA Hispanic whose first language is English. Would one say that her order of a “hotdog with kechup“pronounced hought/doughg wit que/choop” is not proper English? Many would likely say that it is not. But isn’t she a native English speaker?

As an increasing number take on English as their first language, what does a “native speaker” mean after all? It surely can be an Australian or a Scot, but how about an Indian whose parents spoke English and Hindi to him since he was born, went to a British system school in Bangalore, and now lives in the US and his cadence and accent clearly identify him as someone from India? Wouldn’t he also be a native English speaker? Or how about the Afro Caribbean Millennial from the former British colony of Grenada? In her lilting Caribbean pronunciation, isn’t she also a native English speaker?  

GlobalEnglish is one business English language instruction organization that does use voices of people from a variety of different nationalities who are positioned as native English speakers coming from certain parts of the world. This way, for example, the professional in Krakow who is just starting to interact regularly with professionals in India and is as unlikely to learn Hindi as her Indian counterparts are going to learn Polish, needs to brush up on her English. But this time rather than listening to the British pronunciations she was likely exposed to during her Polish equivalent of English 101 highschool class, through her headphones linked to their site she is hearing the proper pronunciations by that new English native speaker, the Indian from Bangalore.  She’s gearing up to be an effective global worker. 

Interim Thoughts

In the fascinating and entertaining nine-part BBC and PBS  TV series and book, The Story of English, the writers trace the evolution of English from the 5th Century AD up to the turn of the Millenium just before the explosion of the globalization era. While theirs is a story line that ties the rise of English to the economic dominance of English speaking Britain and U.S., the new chapters will need to explore the continued rise of English due to the economic dominance, paradoxically, of non-English speaking countries. 

In the third and final installment on this modern story of English we will explore why accents will become both a greater and lesser issue in the workplace and what is going on in the growing rivalry between English and Chinese as the language of choice in business.

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