This is ancillary to the Referendum forum and arises from an observation by another poster, when he noted that French negotiators refused to use English even though they were fluent in it. (I found the same problem when dealing with staff in student exchanges.)
Businesspeople do not like the idea that they must also be linguists but that that is one way into good rapprochement with awkward foreigners; certainly, the French often seem to melt when we try out even our school-level mastery of their language. Linguistic skills are in fact valuable international marketing tools (and international political tools, for that matter).
When I canvassed employers about training for this, the response was mostly on the lines that a given language could be picked up via a one-month “total immersion†course, whereas it takes years to develop the mastery shown, for example, by Germans dealing with us in English. Would they pay extra to an employee achieving a high level of proficiency? No way!
So, if you are sent abroad on such missions, what is your organisation’s attitude to this?
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 22 Jul 16 at 12:49
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Languages for Business new
Languages for Business new