Globally Speaking

Rapid telecommunications are helping to push us all toward adopting a global language. Consider a series of magazine ads called "The Sixth Sense" that AT&T ran in 1998. The ads quoted an enthusiastic client as saying: "If an engineer wants to do a customer presentation tomorrow on a topic he is not very familiar with, we can send him 150 slides within hours from various corners of the world." It's clear that those 150 slides are not all going to be translated that fast; their captions, labels, and text need to be in a single language that can be understood at all branch offices. That language is English.

Americans often assume that it's easy for others to speak our tongue. It isn't, though. If English isn't their native language, they have to learn it. Those of us who have struggled to use other languages abroad know that learning them well is a challenge, and we've all made our share of gaffes. David once made a Barcelona waiter crack up by confusing jamón (ham) and jabón (soap) as he ordered a soap sandwich. And Martin drew laughter in Indonesia when he asked some students the location of their romance (asmara) instead of their dorm (asrama).

Our own struggles with other languages should sensitize us to the fact that those millions who take the trouble to learn English deserve our empathy and patience. After all, they are bending over backwards to speak "our" language so that we can understand them. Just as speaking Spanish or Indonesian can cause us embarrassment, speaking English can cause embarrassment for those who know it only as a foreign language: tourists, foreign workers, and immigrants in the United States, as well as people we meet overseas.

In addition to being good listeners, we also need to become clearer speakers. When we express ourselves enthusiastically in a social situation or business presentation, we often lose sight of the possibility that we may speak in a way that's hard for them to understand.