I hope that we will globally accept a united language for cross national communication, whilst also preserving our own native language.
Introduction
I am Danish. Denmark is a small country and for centuries we have interacted with our close neighbours and other countries far and wide – sometimes peacefully as tradesmen, other times violently at war to acquire land or during raids in coastal areas.
Therefore, integrated in the Danish culture is the acceptance and knowledge that you need to be able to communicate in non-native languages.
During my childhood we only had one native TV channel being broadcast so most films had Danish subtitles. In public school both English and German were mandatory languages, and we were also expected to be able to read books written in Swedish and Norwegian and for the last year also learn French as preparation for College.
Most of our holidays were spent travelling around the countries surrounding Denmark primarily visiting the sites of Danish historical interest.
At college German was replaced with French – and yes, even after an additional 3 years of French, for me, there is still plenty of room for improvement!
When I studied at Aalborg University as an Engineer half the books were in English and during one term we even had a professor from Poland teaching us speaking English with the book and handouts in Danish.
My first position as an Engineer was at the Great Belt Link project in Denmark.
The image is from a visit paid by my parents – here we are at Sprogø Site.
The company was officially Danish, but the ownership and management was split between a Danish company, an American, a German and two French companies. Within a short time frame the major French company had taken control by merging the other French company.
During this project I worked together with the Germans and the Americans serving in a section led by a French Manager. Luckily the company language was English, however this turned out to be my first experience of how cultural differences and language barriers can create an unintended ‘crisis’.
In my next position the language and cultural challenges were limited to Danish and Swedish differences – even a small country like Denmark has several different expectations around cultural behaviour.
Hereafter things became international again. The business was owned by a Swedish company, managed by Danes and the team I was a part of cooperated with people from the USA, UK, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland and France. During this period I experienced that motivated people without a political agenda are more open to communicate despite the lack of fluency in the language selected.
My next experience was with another Scandinavian Enterprise based in Denmark. The projects I was working on involved people from Sweden, Norway, USA and Belgium. When it came to language a “safe” environment, but as to the cultural impact it was more challenging.
I cooperated closely long-term with an American company during this period and at this time had my first real experience of the differences between traditional Oxford English versus US English. Another experience was related to culture – I had to learn that an invitation such as “let’s meet after work” without a time and place was just meant as a polite gesture to any visitors…
Then I changed company, when it came to language and culture, I expected it to be business as usual but… I was employed in the Danish subsidiary of an American enterprise; however the organization I was a part of turned out to be managed first by Germany and then France with internal resources in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, England, Italy, France and the USA.
One advantage during this period, it was decided that English was to be the official language of communication internally and externally, however we still experienced challenges caused by our local cultures of origin.
With all my experience so far, you might question my next move, but I am always open for new challenges 🙂
For a period of almost two years I cooperated with a couple of USA based companies and had a strong belief that I brought a lot of value to the table.
Some other challenges and opportunities led me to temporarily relocate to France for a short period. Here I discovered something interesting relating to how the culture impacts the decisions that closes rather than opens the relationships with non-native people.
I have met many open-minded French people who were challenged in having to speak English. On the other hand as mentioned earlier there was room to improve my French, so our communication only succeeded due to us both being flexible. Interestingly I discovered that the reason many of the French refuse to speak English is because they are embarrassed by their English language skills. Here having the advantage of being Danish we ended up having an exchange using a mix of French, English, German and hand gestures – might have been fun to watch, but it resulted in all parties feeling understood.
Another experience is related to the business environment. As my present French competence is at ‘Je comprend plus que je parle’ (‘I understand more than I speak’) level, there has been no interest in using my skills – not even for a position that required working outside of France.
My present adventure has been initiated by the opportunity to stay for a limited period in Spain. My intention is to learn enough Spanish to attract interest from companies based here. However living surrounded by people from Sweden, Germany, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway and Spain, I will be just as challenged as I am with speaking French. An interesting fact is that every time I have been immersed in listening to or speaking German/ Dutch, for a couple of weeks thereafter, I find I cannot express myself in French …
So just to round up this long journey I hope that we will globally accept a united language for cross national communication, whilst also preserving our own native language. For each language my hope for the future is that we will keep the traditional well-spoken and correctly written language – the “SMS” abbreviated ‘text speak’ is in my opinion damaging our communication dramatically… it’s like sitting at a meeting where new buzz-words/ abbreviations are thrown around and as all the participants finally fully understand them no-one raises the question: “What does PC mean in this context?”.
Best wishes for the future.
PC has been used as the abbreviation for:
Politically Correct/ Personal Computer/ Power Controller/ Primary Center/ Primary Contact/ and so forth…
This article was published initially on LinkedIn on 2 March 2020. I have made some adjustments to the content in this version.
Image Credits:
| Love To Learn | Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash |
| Europe | Photo by USGS on Unsplash |
| Me with Pops at Sprogoe | Photo by the author himself |
| Watching the Puzzle | Dreamstime Free |
| The Flow | Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash |
| Internal Meeting | Photo by Paul Bence on Unsplash |
| New York 2014 | Photo by the author himself |
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