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Lack of languages stifles Brits and USers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 73 of 95 15 July 2014 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Apparently in the UK, though, companies are losing billions due to unfulfilled
language requirements. Take the article with a grain of salt (or more likely, a mountain), since it is the Daily Mail reporting this, but... since it's pertinent, couldn't leave it out of the discussion: languages-Just-9-pupils-basic-mastery-French-compared-42-els ewhere.html">UK loses out financially due to poor language knowledge Edited by tarvos on 15 July 2014 at 7:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4621 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 74 of 95 16 July 2014 at 10:41am | IP Logged | ||
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If UK / USA firms are really losing lots of potential business due to lack of language skills, don't you think
somebody somewhere in the private sector would have figured this out by now and would formulate a strategy to gain a commercial advantage? I think this kind of article gets recycled every so often in order to make native English speakers feel a little guilty about our poor record with other languages. But the fact is that the vast majority of Brits and Americans can lead a very fulfilling life knowing only English. There are jobs here in the UK for foreign language speakers. My wife came over from Germany 10 years ago and has had several German-speaking jobs in customer support and logistics. She earns a reasonable wage but my salary is significantly higher for a position which requires only English. So where's the incentive to try and perfect my German for professional purposes? As it happens, I did learn German for personal pleasure and to enable me to communicate smoothly with my in-laws. I love going over to Germany and being able to function independently in the language but I've learned for social reasons, not because I always felt I was missing out on something in my previous monolingual life. My wife worked in a couple of call centres and I met many of her colleagues from the German teams. The vast majority were native speakers. Those who grew up in the UK tended to have a German parent and obviously learned the language as a child. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 75 of 95 16 July 2014 at 11:35am | IP Logged | ||
But you have a penis. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 76 of 95 16 July 2014 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Kudos to beano for illustrating what some of us have observed. As for the post that follows, I think it pretty well
summarizes the author's contribution to the debate. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 77 of 95 16 July 2014 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||
What Luke said may have been blunt, but he makes a very good point: salaries across the world are dependent on gender. Contrary to Beano's argument, salary isn't necessarily a good measure of the value or skill of an employee. Beano actually raises a good point: if the Guardian article had been about the need for companies to hire more women, would we be hearing arguments like "if companies really needed women they would pay them more"? I hope Beano won't tell his wife that he's a better employee than her because he makes more money. Here's another kind of article which keeps getting recycled every so often to make male workers feel guilty: Gender pay gap Following the logic of "pay = value", you would have to conclude that women are less valuable workers than men. I repeat what I said early on in this discussion: if companies knew what was good for them, we wouldn't be in the current financial mess. I'm not saying all company managers are fools, but pay decisions come from a lot of things, and the value of an employee isn't often top of that list. Edited by Jeffers on 16 July 2014 at 1:56pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 78 of 95 16 July 2014 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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The thread is not about gender pay differences, a very important subject in its own right. I don't even think that
we are talking about salary being a measure of the value or skill of an employee. What we are talking about is the importance and economic value of foreign language capability for industries and for individuals. What Beano and others have pointed out is that the vast majority of jobs in the UK do not require any foreign language skills and the jobs that do require those skills are filled by immigrants and heritage speakers. What I think we are also seeing is that the issue is not really the salary differential between having and not having multilingual skills but more employability per se. Salary is not a reflection of linguistic skills. Certain jobs require multilingual skills period, others don't. The pay difference may not be that different. Even in Canada with two official languages, a similar situation applies. Although there used to be and maybe still exists a bilingualism premium in certain government positions such as the federal police force, in the federal government, bilingual positions are not paid more than non-bilingual positions. Bilingualism is simply a requirement for the job. If you are not bilingual, then apply for a non-bilingual job. What is obvious of course is that bilingual people have access to all the jobs. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4948 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 79 of 95 16 July 2014 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Not US/UK firms, US/UK citizens are losing potential positions, as said above by s_allard, because they are not maximizing the entire job availability/openings (even if it's only 5% requiring bilingualism, etc... it still can be the difference between short term and long term unemployment). These days there is really little left of "national firms". Thus the word multinational. But I agree it is still not a very significant disadvantage for English-only speakers. True globalization, with what the internet, instant global access to all media, easy communication, and the rise of emerging nations, is only 10-15 years old (around the year 2000). I do believe more medium term, either it will become a significant disadvantage if anything because in a global workplace, 2-3 languages at LEAST will be seen as a requirement... OR technology of translation will render 2nd language learning obsolete in a pragmatic sense (but never in a cultural, intellectual, or personal relationship sense). Edited by outcast on 16 July 2014 at 8:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4532 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 80 of 95 16 July 2014 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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While I think that the argument about gender is important, I think it's misplaced here, in part at least as it makes sense for companies to pay workers the lowest salaries they can get away with, and for sad historical reasons companies can get away with paying women less.
I do have a problem is this implicit assumption in many of the posts that Smith's Invisible Hand of the Market is really all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps companies just aren't smart enough to work out that they need bilingual workers - at least in the subset of companies that work in the UK, and who are sufficiently small that they aren't multinationals with sufficient non-UK workers to fill whatever language gaps they may have. Edited by patrickwilken on 16 July 2014 at 8:57pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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