Why Travelers Should Use Global English
Most conscientious travelers know to learn and use a few basic words and phrases—thank you, please, hello—while traveling in countries that predominantly speak other languages then their own. (If you don’t do this, please do.)
What native speakers of English often forget, though, is that people who have learned English as a second language and who may use it almost exclusively in certain situations—such as during work in service careers at hotels and restaurants—usually do not speak or understand English at the level of a naïve speaker.
Even if someone is fluent in another language, fluency rarely means the same level of facility with a language that a native speaker has.
Yet people—and I can speak only of my fellow anglophones speaking to nonnative speakers of English—often assume that if someone can speak English, even with an accent, they can speak English and can understand English with the same ease that they do.
Wrong.
Use Global English When Traveling
I recommend anglophones on travel—who have the luxury of a native language quite commonly spoken by nonnative speakers—stick to what I call “global English.”
I define the term “global English” as a register of language clearly and cleanly spoken that avoids idiomatic and colloquial turns of phrase.
And while this sounds simple and obvious, I’ve found through experience that it is far, far more difficult to put into practice than people realize.
For example, I have traveled more than once with my US compatriots who, in restaurants, told the servers that they wanted to “do the chicken.”
They didn’t think about their phrasing—they just ordered their food as they typically do when at home.
Now, in many cases, if the restaurant caters to Americans, the servers there will understand that the American is ordering the chicken dish. I have, however, quite often seen looks of confusion cross servers’ faces in restaurants before I jumped in with clarification.
In restaurants and hotels, the risks of using a native speaker’s register of language and having someone misunderstand you are minor. However, I recently had a traveling companion suffer a very frightening medical emergency in a rural area of a country where neither of us spoke the local language and the locals’ level of English—even at the hospital—was basic. (I admired that they spoke English at all!) My traveling companions caused so much confusion with their native-English-speaking habits and I so often needed to translate from “American” to “global English” to prevent disaster that the medical professionals stopped speaking with anyone but me.
In those types of situations, misunderstandings can have dire consequences.
I’ve only grown accustomed to using global English through having married a nonnative English speaker and living in a part of the world where English is not the official language. While I can speak French, often people around me cannot, which defaults us to English with nonnative speakers. I find I quite often need to translate. And even with my husband, who speaks fluent English, I find I often relax into speaking too quickly, too colloquially or too idiomatically, or too lazily in terms of enunciation for him to understand me clearly.
Global English in Practice
Here’s how to put global English into practice:
Enunciate clearly. Do not eat your words! Whereas with a fellow native speaker you can smoosh the words together to speak quickly and can avoid pronouncing each syllable crisply, because native-speaker brains fill in the blanks, nonnative speakers struggle with English that isn’t clearly spoken.
Though you shouldn’t speak to a nonnative speaker as you would to a child, you should speak more slowly than you would with a fellow native speaker. Fortunately, the need to enunciate and speak crisply will naturally slow your pace of speech.
Do not use colloquial speech. Do not “fix to do something,” for example, but “prepare to do something.” Don’t “hit the road” or “get a move on” but “need to go to XYZ.”
Avoid idiomatic speech. We all love colorful turns of phrase—and sometimes we don’t even realize they are colorful turns of phrase, we’ve grown so accustomed to them. But try to be mindful when communicating with nonnative speakers. Don’t say you’re “in a pickle” or thank someone for “going the extra mile” or ask to “ensure we’re on the same page.” Instead, say that you “need help,” that you “appreciate their help” or ask them “to confirm” something you have said.
Pay close attention to your interlocutors’ faces and responses. Rephrase if you aren’t sure they understood something you said. You will not hurt anything or anyone by repeating yourself with a rephrasing of your comment or question.
Do not ask your interlocutors if they understood you or tell them that they did not understand you. This is rude, even if well intentioned, and it will make them uncomfortable. Simply rephrase your statement or question if you are not certain that you were understood.
Global English is Safe and Respectful
We native English speakers are fortunate to speak the language that is now, to a great extent, the global world’s lingua franca. We’re spoiled, quite frankly.
All too often, we let the confidence that people wherever we go—or at least enough people—will speak our language lull us into assumptions. Rude assumptions.
It’s rude to assume or expect that everyone around the world speaks English—and it is equally rude to assume that people can speak English with the native-level understanding and casual ease of someone born into and with a lifetime of experience within the language (and often, as with many anglophones, only the one language).