Global English

The Economist

The English empire

A growing number of firms worldwide are adopting English as their official language

 "But when Lenovo bought IBM’s personal-computer division in 2005 he decided to immerse himself in English"

Well, no wonder, having Ashton Kutcher as a product engineer for the company who wouldn't like talking to him? Just kidding. Lenovo's president's action is praiseworthy. It shows he is committed, that he wants IT bad. It kind of reminds me and my efforts to learn Japanese. 

"There are some obvious reasons why multinational companies want a lingua franca. Adopting English makes it easier to recruit global stars (including board members), reach global markets, assemble global production teams and integrate foreign acquisitions. Such steps are especially important to companies in Japan, where the population is shrinking."

 Someone please hire me! I come with a Bonus bundle! I know english and I'm a native Portuguese.  Besides I know japanese, and Chinese comes as a bonus (still studying). I also have cultural knowledge, still far from "perfect" but improving everyday through living in Japan and having a lot of chinese people around. And I read a lot.

I think that companies should keep their culture and identity instead of trying to adapt a new language that its people might not understand fully (cultural implications). Not only this will lead to probable misunderstandings and well as it might limit employees who are not comfortable using the language, thus sabotaging their overall performance and confidence. Instead they should hire people with a good cultural knowledge and/or language skills to deal with the english speaking companies. As well as english speaking companies should do the same but for other languages/cultures.

"There are less obvious reasons too. Rakuten’s boss, Hiroshi Mikitani, argues that English promotes free thinking because it is free from the status distinctions which characterise Japanese and other Asian languages."

(going to talk a bit on status and relationships in Portugal)
Wow, that is so true! We also have status distinctions in the european portuguese (in brazilian portuguese I'm not sure) and having grown up heavily influenced by american tv series (therefore english) I grew not being able to obey to those status distinctions language rules inside my family because I always felt - and feel - very restrained and not being truly myself. I couldn't use the formal version of "you" when talking to my grandparents, no way, I liked them way too much to use formal distant language. I was always preoccupied about this, because all my other family members use, but my grandparents (fortunately!) never even scolded me for this. I think that there's also the generation gap.
This american tv influence in only a theory, but I believe that watching relationships on tv influenced the way I see relationships in Portugal. For instance, in Portuguese telenovelas people use that showing status oriented language a lot. Even among friends! And parent-child relationships! It's ridiculous! No one talks like that in that kind of relationships in real life except for pretentious people.
Of course, I use it with people from the outside, with whom I want no close relationship or that I know our relationship won't last enough in order for me to become able to use colloquial language.

The most striking example is teachers. Ever since I entered university that that has changed, but until high school me and my classmates avoided teachers because they were the authority, they had the power to call our parents and tell them about our grades and bad behavior (that's why I was considerably well behaved at school), they had the power to scold us (or showing us we are inferior to them). It's not like we are afraid of the teachers, it's more like we don't want to obey someone who  tells us we should obey so we avoid them as much as possible (but ever since I have Asian teachers that that has changed a bit and is changing).
But then again, since in Portugal we value equality and fairness very much, teachers also don't want close relationships with students and students understand that because if that were to happen, perhaps we would see unfair grades within the class and that's certainly something students don't like seeing.
When I refer to portuguese people, I'm refering to all the experience I have in Portugal, that might serve as a understanding point of the portuguese, it obviously does not mean that the portuguese population is like this. This is based on my experience from primary school-high school (hometown) to university (different district, class based on people not from my hometown)

"native English speakers often assume that the spread of their language in global corporate life confers an automatic advantage on them. In fact it can easily encourage them to rest on their laurels. Too many of them (especially Englishmen, your columnist keeps being told) risk mistaking their fluency in meetings for actual accomplishments."

 I am not a native english speaker, and my english probably sucks when compared to a native but here's something I think might be happening a lot and don't want to happen to me just because I'm a portuguese native or because I can speak english. I personally think that for a person to whom this might be happening and being aware of it, despite of the salary or good conditions, it might be a ego downer. ...Or ego booster if this was unexpected in the first place.

Goodbye, I'm off to the library to do some studying!