l’Anglais au Travail

One of the things I do each day to improve my French is listen to podcasts. Among the programs I listen to is: “Faut qu’on en parle” by Faustine Bollaert. In her program on Tuesday this week she talks about the questions that you should never ask people because they are too personal.

One of the questions is of course, how much money do you make? Now just about every French person I have ever met will say that it is just not acceptable behavior to talk about how much people make. Your income is a personal matter and is never discussed in public.

What I find puzzling though is that so many French people think that it is any different in the USA! Faustine’s guest even says on the program that Americans are perfectly comfortable talking about how much they earn. I have to tell you folks that it is not true! Americans (and Australians) do not talk about how much they make. Not ever! It’s just not done! Really!! Asking an American how much money they earn would be a huge social mistake.

Now, this is a bit of a dilemma because most Americans want to make a lot of money, and not being able to brag about it can be pretty frustrating. Thankfully they have found a solution to this problem by devising ways to display their wealth so that it’s easy to guess how much they make without having to ask. In fact showing how much they make is so important for some people, that their entire life is spent in the pursuit of this demonstration of material wealth.

There are three primary ways to do it. And I bet there isn’t much difference between Americans and Europeans in this regard, but you will have to tell me if I am incorrect.

1. Buy a big, expensive car - It’s important to drive the latest model. The more you make, the bigger your car should be. Unfortunately this is no longer a true measure of wealth since a lot of people just take on a large amount of debt to buy a way more expensive car than they can afford, so they can trick people into thinking they make more money than they really do.

2. Buy a big house - It’s all about size and location. Buy the biggest house you can possibly afford. It doesn’t matter if you need a big house or not. What matters is that your house is big and costs a lot of money. The nice thing about earning more is that you can borrow more. So make sure you get the biggest loan possible to maximize the size of your house.

3. Plastic surgery - If you are over 35 and you make a lot of money, then you really need to get your boobs done, your tummy tucked, and your thighs vacuumed. Failing to do this will lead your peers to doubt that you really can afford that expensive car and big house.

So the next time you hear someone tell you that Americans are quite comfortable talking about how much they earn, you can set them straight!

A bientôt

I receive 2 or 3 calls a week from Indian companies attempting to sell me offshore software development services. Now, I have nothing against offshore development, or the companies that do it. But what is amazing to me, is that many of the people that contact me have such poor English language skills, that it’s nearly impossible to understand them.

One of the fundamental principles of any international business relationship is the ability to communicate effectively. If the sales person contacting me can’t speak understandable English, what are the chances the technical team will be any better? Not very high!

Here is an example of a person who obviously knows English, but has such a strong accent that it’s a real struggle to make any sense of what he is saying.

As a test of your English listening skills, see if you can determine what the name of his company is, and what the location of their USA office is! Leave a comment with your answers and I’ll post the correct answer next week.

Good luck!

The way you pronounce words when speaking to an anglohone has a huge impact on your ability to be understood. You may have a perfect command of English, but if your pronunciation is poor, your listener will struggle to understand you. This can be frustrating for both of you.

Your goal should not be to speak English with no accent, but to try and pronounce the words as clearly and correctly as you can. A little effort here will go a long way to improving your level of spoken English.

In this recording, I pronounce a number of words that tend to be difficult for francophones. Listen to the recording and practice repeating each word after me, until you feel you have mastered the correct sounds.

Good luck!

Here’s the list of words that are spoken in the recording.