Ask HN: Should everyone speak English at a company?
I want to ask what other peoples opinions on this are before I talk to someone.
I am working in a tiny conference room. There are 8 of us in here. 5 Indian that speak Hindi with each other 24/7, 2 Chinese that speak Chinese 99% of the time between each other, and then there's me. I feel so awkward just being here, everyone talking with each other like they're best friends.
Monday. Elevator. I ask my coworker how her weekend was. "Oh it was alright, just watched some TV, you?" I already know this is a bullshit response.
Her Indian coworker asks her how her weekend was, and then they just go off for like 2 hours between each other in full on Hindi.
27 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 73.9 ms ] threadI think speaking different languages at work can create a us vs them atmosphere that's not good for a healthy work environment.
Also, several states are de facto bilingual.
And then there's South Africa, with 11 official languages.
So I don't think your views are really all that generally applicable.
What you describe is a different scenario. For example, one of my clients was a company in Sweden. Almost no Swedes were in the team. The de facto language for the team was English, even though Sweden's official language is Swedish. The poster's logic would insist that everyone speak Swedish (or one of Sweden's minority languages), even though everyone knew English. While you would say that's fine.
I've also worked for an Austrian company where nearly everyone spoke German most of the time. (Not all of the time; unlike the main thread, I did have chit-chat and work-related conversations. But coffee breaks and lunch were mostly in German.) Okay, I was the outsider. I'm also the outsider when people talk about bands, movies, and sports, since I know so very little about those topics compared to most. That's life?
What about an American company in China? There is a good reason why English is the business language in our office; also, many foreign employees don't speak Chinese but do speak English even though its not their first language. If you want to be international, I think English is pretty mandatory.
Edit: here are some links from Wales:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13080586
The official tongue here, and the company, is English. When you're at WORK, speak it.
Your responses seem unusually aggressive.
Edit: canada - the official languages are English and French. You would be unable to do anything if they were all speaking French.
You say there are two groups. One group speaks "Chinese" and the other group speaks "Hindi". So one group doesn't know what the other group is saying. You (rather paranoically) say that they may be talking shit about you. That's true, but the Indians may be talking shit about the Chinese and the Chinese may be talking shit about the Indians.
From your description of events, they clearly already know how to speak English. They choose not to include you in their personal social interactions, in part by not speaking English (but, you know, people can still do that even if they speak your language.)
> The official tongue here, and the company, is English.
Is it? If "here" is the US, it doesn't have an official language. I wouldn't be surprised if the company didn't either -- most don't.
> When you're at WORK, speak it.
If they are violating workplace policies by their non-English interactions, your best recourse is probably to the people responsible for enforcing those policies rather than HN. If they aren't violating any workplace policies, and they speak English to the extent necessary to effectively do their jobs, I'm not sure you have a legitimate grounds for complaint. Certainly, not for entitled demands.
That is, how is this different than if one group of people constantly talks about what their fantasy football team is doing, and another constantly talk about celebrity gossip, and you care about neither sports nor celebrities?
The example you gave isn't mutually exclusive - "watched some TV" followed by two hours of discussion might be "watched the Indian equivalent of House of Cards over the weekend and now want to talk about it." You wouldn't have seen it, nor know the relevant political background to make sense of it. Would you spend several hours during work to coach a near stranger on US politics, in order to describe the TV show you just watched?
Speaking of which, how are they able to talk for 2 hours in a small room without distracting anyone else? You're likely exaggerating, but is your frustration that you're feeling lonely/isolated, that the room is too small for the number of people in it, or something else besides just that you don't speak Hindi or Chinese?
Getting HR to force everyone to speak English isn't really going to help anything.
I'm not exaggerating, do not assume I am. These are my work conditions. They talk. All day, every day.
Right now I'm just some random team member cramped in a tiny room full of strangers for the next year, me, being the only one that doesn't share a common tongue with them besides English.
What a silly example, no I wouldn't coach them on my entire fucking culture to talk to them about a TV show. Giving a response like "Just watched some TV" means they want nothing more to do with you, because nobody ever "just watches some TV" during the weekend.
I highly doubt she sat there, for 3 fucking day, plastered to her goddamn screen.
It has now created a culture of one liners between me and them, like if I want to say something, the entire team stops talking, then waits for what I say, then resume their crap.
I'm requesting to be reassigned to a new project if they can't speak English, or I'm quitting on the spot. Working in a complete vacuum is the absolute worst, it's gotten to a point now where I am becoming a bother for simply interacting.
I did not mean to imply that all she did was watch TV. I'm saying that your example wasn't enough be meaningful to others not in your circumstances.
Billions of people around the world somehow manage to work in multi-lingual, multi-cultural environments, so requiring a mono-lingual work environment can't intrinsically and always be the best solution.
Based in what you've said, you don't even want your co-workers to spend 5% of their time speaking a non-English language, for concern they will be talking shit about you during that time.
If you've never worked in a place with few other English speakers, then I can see how that would especially bother you. I mostly ignore the Spanish, German or Arabic I hear, but then again I also grew up in a multilingual neighborhood of the US.
The key part when you talk to HR is the "working in a vacuum" aspect, and not specifically the language. Otherwise it's much easier to say that you're the one who's culturally intolerant.
Having said this, I personally think that it is rude to talk in a language in work settings that someone else does not understand even though you may not be talking to/about them. However, many times, the people doing this do not realize it is rude (again due to cultural differences). They will think "what the heck, I am talking in my mother tongue to someone else, why does he/she care". They do not realize that it might be making the other person uncomfortable.
P.S: I am an Indian who moved to the US many years ago.
I work in an English-speaking office that is 95% Chinese (and I'm the only non-Chinese on my team), my Chinese is marginal but I make it a point to interject English into conversations even if I have the slightest idea about what is being discussed. But otherwise, I'm used to it.
I work for one company and we're a multi-language team. If needed, we all speak in english. No one complained. Actually meetings start depending the main actor, if he/she an english speaker, then we all start to talk in english. Actually we speak in spanish, catalan, english and italian.
For someone to whom English is a second language, it doesn't come naturally to converse all the time in English - they probably think in their vernacular and translate it into English all the time they talk to you. Asking them to converse among themselves in English just so the lone English could understand their Shah Rukh Khan gossip is unrealistic.
I learned enough Spanish to understand a few conversations here or there, or to get the gist of what they are saying. Newsflash: They're BSing about stuff like you or I would in English.
Forcing people to speak English when it is a 2nd language may actually hinder communication and team building. Perhaps something they may say could come out wrong because they don't understand the culture-specific constructs of what is or isn't appropriate.
In my former paragraph, I'm not stating that they are saying things that would otherwise be universally wrong to discuss in any language (racism, etc.) but more along the lines of word choice that may be inappropriate in a particular culture but perfectly fine in another.
The most obvious that comes to mind is the French (Quebec) word, "maudit". Literally translated, this is usually translated to "damn" (damn cat, damn dog, etc.) But they use it far more openly than we do here in the states. It's not appropriate in large work meetings and public forums to use the word. However, at the Musee de la Civilization in Quebec City; "maudit hiver" is on a sign and the literally translated statement, "damn winter" sits beneath it.
This sort of thing happens a lot amongst polyglots and people. The reality is that 'fluency' is never truly fluent, but usually close enough for every day interaction.
I think it will harm the team cohesion otherwise.