Accepting a job in your second language?
April 11, 2022 11:30 PM Subscribe
Do you have any thoughts on working at a job where client-facing operations would be in your second language? (Working with colleagues and written work would be in your primary language.) Were you able to improve after starting the job and basically using it every day? Do I jump in, stretch myself, or avoid?
I have a job offer where I will have the opportunity to work in my (functionally) second language. This second language is technically my first language in that grew up speaking this language at home but I did not go to school in this language, so my vocabulary is lacking and I feel like I would have some limitations in expressing myself. I don't use this language regularly in my daily life anymore. Proficiency-wise, I have been technically certified to do the job in this second language, but I know that my language abilities could still be better and I worry that clients would be like "are you kidding me" or there could be some misunderstandings. I am motivated to learn, would find it so meaningful to have an opportunity to work in my second language, and overall I am not bad at picking up vocabulary. It has been a life goal of mine to eventually improve my language skills.
The job is verbally heavy-- the work I do involves 10-30 minute conversations with people all day long; a lot of the conversations would cover the same few things over and over again but of course conversation may flow in any direction and I'm sure I will encounter topics where I will simply lack the vocabulary. I would probably have the vocabulary to ask clarifying questions, and interpreters are available at this job if needed. It would be important for me to not make substantial errors in comprehension in this role.
I've talked to other people who work in the same type of job/position who are native speakers and they seem to think that it would be fine for me to practice with an interpreter initially and think I would be fine afterwards... I've also met people in this role who use their second language and they have told me that over time they have gotten so used to working in their second language that it's almost like they just switch modes in work vs personal life. I'm not sure if the employers are overestimating my abilities or if they just really need some more people in this job who speak this language, or if I'm underestimating how quickly I would get used to speaking in my second language.
If you have ever done something similar, how did it go for you? I want to do a good job and serve my clients well. I'm very willing and eager to learn, but I also want to avoid a situation in which I'm totally in over my head and it'll be stressful for all parties involved.
I have a job offer where I will have the opportunity to work in my (functionally) second language. This second language is technically my first language in that grew up speaking this language at home but I did not go to school in this language, so my vocabulary is lacking and I feel like I would have some limitations in expressing myself. I don't use this language regularly in my daily life anymore. Proficiency-wise, I have been technically certified to do the job in this second language, but I know that my language abilities could still be better and I worry that clients would be like "are you kidding me" or there could be some misunderstandings. I am motivated to learn, would find it so meaningful to have an opportunity to work in my second language, and overall I am not bad at picking up vocabulary. It has been a life goal of mine to eventually improve my language skills.
The job is verbally heavy-- the work I do involves 10-30 minute conversations with people all day long; a lot of the conversations would cover the same few things over and over again but of course conversation may flow in any direction and I'm sure I will encounter topics where I will simply lack the vocabulary. I would probably have the vocabulary to ask clarifying questions, and interpreters are available at this job if needed. It would be important for me to not make substantial errors in comprehension in this role.
I've talked to other people who work in the same type of job/position who are native speakers and they seem to think that it would be fine for me to practice with an interpreter initially and think I would be fine afterwards... I've also met people in this role who use their second language and they have told me that over time they have gotten so used to working in their second language that it's almost like they just switch modes in work vs personal life. I'm not sure if the employers are overestimating my abilities or if they just really need some more people in this job who speak this language, or if I'm underestimating how quickly I would get used to speaking in my second language.
If you have ever done something similar, how did it go for you? I want to do a good job and serve my clients well. I'm very willing and eager to learn, but I also want to avoid a situation in which I'm totally in over my head and it'll be stressful for all parties involved.
Over the past 15 years I've steadily moved to working more and more in my second language, and in increasingly technical / knowledge-based fields. Each time things have ticked up in frequency / complexity required, I've been apprehensive, but have found that I've adapted much more quickly than I expected.
The repetitive nature of the conversations, the availability of interpreters to practice with and your level of motivation make me think you would be fine after a brief phase of getting up to speed.
It's surprising how much of ostensibly complex work-related conversation is pretty formulaic, and can be reduced to a script, at least in its key lines. If you use that repetition as a framework when you start, you'll almost certainly find yourself "bolting" extra vocab and new ways of phrasing onto the structure all the time, and your capacity to adapt within that conversational domain will come on very quickly.
posted by protorp at 2:03 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
The repetitive nature of the conversations, the availability of interpreters to practice with and your level of motivation make me think you would be fine after a brief phase of getting up to speed.
It's surprising how much of ostensibly complex work-related conversation is pretty formulaic, and can be reduced to a script, at least in its key lines. If you use that repetition as a framework when you start, you'll almost certainly find yourself "bolting" extra vocab and new ways of phrasing onto the structure all the time, and your capacity to adapt within that conversational domain will come on very quickly.
posted by protorp at 2:03 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
It went well for me. You can totally do this and if there was any doubt in my mind at the start of your question, there wasn’t by the end. I understand the uncertainty, but you’ve got this.
I’m a native speaker of English. I speak Spanish well but had never worked in Spanish until I got a short-term position working as a freaking journalist reporting in Spanish and then writing in English. Most of the reporting was on the phone no less, where I was nervous about speaking without visual cues.
It was fine. The subjects were all over the map, but it was fine. There was occasionally some vocabulary that tripped me up in unfamiliar domains, but I was usually able to steer the conversation toward a synonym or glean from context the meaning. It was overall an interesting study in how little vocabulary we generally use and the extent to which different vocabulary can be plugged into known sentence structures.
posted by fruitslinger at 4:44 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I’m a native speaker of English. I speak Spanish well but had never worked in Spanish until I got a short-term position working as a freaking journalist reporting in Spanish and then writing in English. Most of the reporting was on the phone no less, where I was nervous about speaking without visual cues.
It was fine. The subjects were all over the map, but it was fine. There was occasionally some vocabulary that tripped me up in unfamiliar domains, but I was usually able to steer the conversation toward a synonym or glean from context the meaning. It was overall an interesting study in how little vocabulary we generally use and the extent to which different vocabulary can be plugged into known sentence structures.
posted by fruitslinger at 4:44 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I did this, speaking a reasonable level of fluency in the second language. You will improve daily and the situations you encounter will likely have repetitive vocabulary. When you don't know a word you can look it up or talk around it. It went fine for me, and helped me improve fluency.
posted by bearette at 5:00 AM on April 12, 2022
posted by bearette at 5:00 AM on April 12, 2022
While I have worked in environments with different languages for all of my working life and it’s been fine, there are some potential differences to your situation and caveats that may apply:
In my case, I’ve always been in the respective county where the other language is spoken and thus had the opportunity to be immersed in the language. In most cases I could have gotten away with not speaking/reading/writing in that language and just fall back on English (which is not my first language but feels close enough by now), which allowed me to ramp up my usage of the surrounding language at my own pace.
With that and your situation in mind, I would try to emulate the immersion aspect as much as possible by consuming media in the other language whenever possible (films, books, podcasts, news, blogs, music and my particular tip for boosting foreign-language acquisition: read a book while listening to the audiobook version).
This may also help with a limitation I’ve observed in myself: I can only keep my first language, English, and the language in my current environment fluid at the same time. The other languages I’ve fluid in seem to end up in some mental box, all mixed up, and I pull out a word in another in a random language instead of the one I intended. If I change the environment, then the corresponding language from the metaphorical box ends up on top after some weeks.
Also, at least for me, conversations in one language are so much easier than interpreting between two, regardless of the fluency levels. If that is true for you as well, then with some self-created immersion factor, your setup may become manageable quite quickly, especially since you learned the second language so early in life.
One last observation: it can be very tiring to speak in another language, at least until you get quite fluid in it. The added cognitive load takes energy.
posted by meijusa at 6:02 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
In my case, I’ve always been in the respective county where the other language is spoken and thus had the opportunity to be immersed in the language. In most cases I could have gotten away with not speaking/reading/writing in that language and just fall back on English (which is not my first language but feels close enough by now), which allowed me to ramp up my usage of the surrounding language at my own pace.
With that and your situation in mind, I would try to emulate the immersion aspect as much as possible by consuming media in the other language whenever possible (films, books, podcasts, news, blogs, music and my particular tip for boosting foreign-language acquisition: read a book while listening to the audiobook version).
This may also help with a limitation I’ve observed in myself: I can only keep my first language, English, and the language in my current environment fluid at the same time. The other languages I’ve fluid in seem to end up in some mental box, all mixed up, and I pull out a word in another in a random language instead of the one I intended. If I change the environment, then the corresponding language from the metaphorical box ends up on top after some weeks.
Also, at least for me, conversations in one language are so much easier than interpreting between two, regardless of the fluency levels. If that is true for you as well, then with some self-created immersion factor, your setup may become manageable quite quickly, especially since you learned the second language so early in life.
One last observation: it can be very tiring to speak in another language, at least until you get quite fluid in it. The added cognitive load takes energy.
posted by meijusa at 6:02 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
My SO did this. She was in the same situation as you, with limited vocabulary (especially for business things) in the language she spoke initially and being far more comfortable in English. It worked out fine despite being in pretty much constant verbal and written communication with speakers of her "second" language.
posted by wierdo at 9:50 AM on April 12, 2022
posted by wierdo at 9:50 AM on April 12, 2022
I speak a few other languages besides English, but not with any technical vocabulary, as I did not go to school for 2 of them and only high school level for the third. So even now I had to look up specific terms online. I believe I can work well enough in those languages unless I ended up in a hyper-specialized field like engineering, where they are likely to speak English anyway.
I believe you have the ability to converse and just need to nail the jargon needed for your specific business area. However, you'll need to create the immersion material on your own.
posted by kschang at 10:58 AM on April 12, 2022
I believe you have the ability to converse and just need to nail the jargon needed for your specific business area. However, you'll need to create the immersion material on your own.
posted by kschang at 10:58 AM on April 12, 2022
Go for it! What are the actual costs (or opportunity costs) of accepting the job? If you end up being a bad fit for the role, will it be hard to find something more in line with your strengths?
This sounds like a fulfilling opportunity, one that will help connect you to yourself better, even if the learning curve is a little steep at first. The company seems to find you capable. Why argue for your own limitations?
posted by itesser at 12:23 PM on April 12, 2022
This sounds like a fulfilling opportunity, one that will help connect you to yourself better, even if the learning curve is a little steep at first. The company seems to find you capable. Why argue for your own limitations?
posted by itesser at 12:23 PM on April 12, 2022
As an English speaker in a Spanish speaking country I am constantly on the other side of this. The topic of language learning often comes up (usually while I’m apologizing for not having functional Spanish) and almost uniformly people say they never really got good at English until they had to speak it for work.
There have been some hiccups, but I’m so grateful to be speaking my native language that I’m happy to accept a few misunderstandings.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:50 PM on April 12, 2022
There have been some hiccups, but I’m so grateful to be speaking my native language that I’m happy to accept a few misunderstandings.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:50 PM on April 12, 2022
I'm only an English speaker but I work for and work with tons of people for whom English is a second language. Notably in my immediate group that would be Spanish, Hindi and Tagalog. Going out one circle brings in Polish, French, Portuguese, Russian and so on. So for my admittedly very large and very global company it is not a big deal. Everyone cuts each other slack and is understanding. Plus, it isn't English proficiency that is thing that trips everyone up, it is local culture differences, language idioms and the like. I've lost count of the number of times my UK colleagues and I have to stop and explain our idioms to each other...despite the fact that we are all native English speakers.
Another example. One of my closest coworkers is within 6 weeks of my age...and while he lives here in Cincinnati now, he grew up in Mumbai. He has been in this country for almost 20 years so we have been swimming in the same culture for a long time. However go beyond something that happened 20 years ago and there is a steep drop off on what we share in common. Unless it was a world-wide global event or phenomenon in the 1980/90s, we don't share hardly any commonality. It can be real eye opening to be constantly reminded that there is lot of different experiences.
posted by mmascolino at 6:14 AM on April 13, 2022
Another example. One of my closest coworkers is within 6 weeks of my age...and while he lives here in Cincinnati now, he grew up in Mumbai. He has been in this country for almost 20 years so we have been swimming in the same culture for a long time. However go beyond something that happened 20 years ago and there is a steep drop off on what we share in common. Unless it was a world-wide global event or phenomenon in the 1980/90s, we don't share hardly any commonality. It can be real eye opening to be constantly reminded that there is lot of different experiences.
posted by mmascolino at 6:14 AM on April 13, 2022
I lived in country A until 18yo, then went to university in country B and found a job there and stayed in country B for the next 25 years. I consider myself bilingual in A and B, but I'm a little rusty with A and don't know the exact job-related technical terms in A.
I would absolutely take such an opportunity. What's the worst that can happen, you don't perform well and have to look for a new job in a month or two? It seems an acceptable risk to me. But I suspect you'd be up to speed in a month or so.
posted by gakiko at 7:27 AM on April 13, 2022
I would absolutely take such an opportunity. What's the worst that can happen, you don't perform well and have to look for a new job in a month or two? It seems an acceptable risk to me. But I suspect you'd be up to speed in a month or so.
posted by gakiko at 7:27 AM on April 13, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
I found that I simply lack a lot of technical vocabulary in German because I didn't train in German and because most of the technical literature I have to read is in English. Obviously, I can read technical information in German and follow my client's technical explanations in German but my brain then has to translate this into English and then translate my English response back to German >>> it is definitely more effort for me to work in German and sometimes I sound a bit clunky - as a native speaker people would not expect me to have that problem.
However, I also find that most of my clients are multinational organisations and they have to switch between languages internally all the time. And most of my contacts speak English fluently. But they really appreciate that they can talk to me in their own language, even if our written communications are primarily in English (so information can be forwarded with non German speakers with ease).
So yes, you may sometimes be grasping for the correct terminology in the other language but people really appreciate being able to speak their own language. And from what you are saying, you'll be discussing the same topics over and over so you'll pick up most of that terminology quite quickly.
posted by koahiatamadl at 1:41 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]