Email Service Notes April 20th (Ben)

I read an interesting article named “Native English speakers are the world’s worst communicators” on the BBC website today. It starts with a story about a company investigating the reason for a failed project, and then finding out that the main reason was one word in an email which had two opposite meanings. But obviously, the sender (an Anglophone) and the recipient (a non-Anglophone) picked up different meanings and executed the way they thought.

According to the article, the biggest difference between native speakers and non-native speakers is the preference for expressions. Due to the limited words of non-native speakers, they prefer to use simple and direct expressions which can be easily understood. On the other hand, the native speakers may unintentionally use some unusual words or abbreviations, which can be difficult for the foreigners to understand. This can perfectly explain that why the foreigners can sometimes understand each other very well in a meeting but communication problems arise when native speakers join in.

No matter in the cross border transactions or negotiations, the most important principle should always be “communicating in an efficient and accurate way”. In order to avoid misunderstandings, confirming with others using different expressions may sometimes be helpful.