

Ask HN: Should everyone speak English at a company? - EC1

I want to ask what other peoples opinions on this are before I talk to someone.<p>I am working in a tiny conference room. There are 8 of us in here. 5 Indian that speak Hindi with each other 24&#x2F;7, 2 Chinese that speak Chinese 99% of the time between each other, and then there&#x27;s me. I feel so awkward just being here, everyone talking with each other like they&#x27;re best friends.<p>Monday. Elevator. I ask my coworker how her weekend was. &quot;Oh it was alright, just watched some TV, you?&quot; I already know this is a bullshit response.<p>Her Indian coworker asks her how her weekend was, and then they just go off for like 2 hours between each other in full on Hindi.
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dalke
Is the language the actual issue?

That is, how is this different than if one group of people constantly talks
about what their fantasy football team is doing, and another constantly talk
about celebrity gossip, and you care about neither sports nor celebrities?

The example you gave isn't mutually exclusive - "watched some TV" followed by
two hours of discussion might be "watched the Indian equivalent of House of
Cards over the weekend and now want to talk about it." You wouldn't have seen
it, nor know the relevant political background to make sense of it. Would you
spend several hours during work to coach a near stranger on US politics, in
order to describe the TV show you just watched?

Speaking of which, how are they able to talk for 2 hours in a small room
without distracting anyone else? You're likely exaggerating, but is your
frustration that you're feeling lonely/isolated, that the room is too small
for the number of people in it, or something else besides just that you don't
speak Hindi or Chinese?

Getting HR to force everyone to speak English isn't really going to help
anything.

~~~
EC1
Those are conversations I can potentially join in on and listen in on. I have
no idea if these people are talking shit about me, and by result of them
talking in their mother languages, they relate with one another more, giving
me no chance to anything with them since I can't understand a word they are
saying.

I'm not exaggerating, do not assume I am. These are my work conditions. They
talk. All day, every day.

Right now I'm just some random team member cramped in a tiny room full of
strangers for the next year, me, being the only one that doesn't share a
common tongue with them besides English.

What a silly example, no I wouldn't coach them on my entire fucking culture to
talk to them about a TV show. Giving a response like "Just watched some TV"
means they want nothing more to do with you, because nobody ever "just watches
some TV" during the weekend.

I highly doubt she sat there, for 3 fucking day, plastered to her goddamn
screen.

It has now created a culture of one liners between me and them, like if I want
to say something, the entire team stops talking, then waits for what I say,
then resume their crap.

I'm requesting to be reassigned to a new project if they can't speak English,
or I'm quitting on the spot. Working in a complete vacuum is the absolute
worst, it's gotten to a point now where I am becoming a bother for simply
interacting.

~~~
dalke
I said "exaggerating" because there are very few jobs where people can work in
a small conference room and can chat for two hours straight while working, and
not have that affect their work quality.

I did not mean to imply that all she did was watch TV. I'm saying that your
example wasn't enough be meaningful to others not in your circumstances.

Billions of people around the world somehow manage to work in multi-lingual,
multi-cultural environments, so requiring a mono-lingual work environment
can't intrinsically and always be the best solution.

Based in what you've said, you don't even want your co-workers to spend 5% of
their time speaking a non-English language, for concern they will be talking
shit about you during that time.

If you've never worked in a place with few other English speakers, then I can
see how that would especially bother you. I mostly ignore the Spanish, German
or Arabic I hear, but then again I also grew up in a multilingual neighborhood
of the US.

The key part when you talk to HR is the "working in a vacuum" aspect, and not
specifically the language. Otherwise it's much easier to say that you're the
one who's culturally intolerant.

------
codegeek
More than language at times, it is usually cultural differences as well. You
gave the example of elevator chit chat. I think it might have more to do with
the fact that your Indian/Chinese co-worker might not have a lot of common
things to talk about. For example, sports. A typical american likes american
football or baseball at least knows enough about it talk to another american.
Someone from another country may not relate to this at all unless they are
actually following the sports (a lot of them do of course). So sometimes they
are not sure what to say and hence go with the usual "weather" or "watched TV"
chat.

Having said this, I personally think that it is rude to talk in a language in
work settings that someone else does not understand even though you may not be
talking to/about them. However, many times, the people doing this do not
realize it is rude (again due to cultural differences). They will think "what
the heck, I am talking in my mother tongue to someone else, why does he/she
care". They do not realize that it might be making the other person
uncomfortable.

P.S: I am an Indian who moved to the US many years ago.

------
DanBC
No. Asking people to speak English only is racist.

Edit: here are some links from Wales:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13080586](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
wales-13080586)

~~~
EC1
Yes, but now I am a complete outsider to my team because they all decided to
speak in their mother tongues. It is NOT racist. I'm quitting my job, or they
will learn to speak English, because I can't work with a team that wants to
have nothing to do with me because I'm not from their country.

The official tongue here, and the company, is English. When you're at WORK,
speak it.

~~~
DanBC
What country are you in?

Your responses seem unusually aggressive.

Edit: canada - the official languages are English and French. You would be
unable to do anything if they were all speaking French.

You say there are two groups. One group speaks "Chinese" and the other group
speaks "Hindi". So one group doesn't know what the other group is saying. You
(rather paranoically) say that they may be talking shit about you. That's
true, but the Indians may be talking shit about the Chinese and the Chinese
may be talking shit about the Indians.

~~~
EC1
Either way, it completely divides our team and that is not right.

------
yen223
Everyone should speak the _same_ language. That language does not necessarily
have to be English.

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cafard
I can see that it can be lonely for you. However, I do not see that your
coworkers are doing anything wrong.

------
esdailycom
As an Indian, this is a topic of conversation even inside India. For example,
the place I worked for in Bangalore had people who spoke to each other in
Hindi, another bunch that spoke Tamil, Telugu, etc. When there was a common
need, of course they spoke in English or Hindi (when everyone understands it).
But to each other, people speak in their vernacular.

For someone to whom English is a second language, it doesn't come naturally to
converse all the time in English - they probably think in their vernacular and
translate it into English all the time they talk to you. Asking them to
converse among themselves in English just so the lone English could understand
their Shah Rukh Khan gossip is unrealistic.

------
NonEUCitizen
Use your work situation as an opportunity to learn some Hindi and Mandarin.

~~~
merrua
Great plan. And useful if you later on move job. You have another useful
skill.

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seanmcdirmid
I'm surprised the Indians were speaking Hindi to each other; India is
linguistically very diverse and two random Indians running into each other
(without knowing where each other is from) would probably speak English, often
even within India.

I work in an English-speaking office that is 95% Chinese (and I'm the only
non-Chinese on my team), my Chinese is marginal but I make it a point to
interject English into conversations even if I have the slightest idea about
what is being discussed. But otherwise, I'm used to it.

------
auganov
You can argue that given how English is the default language of programming it
makes sense to stick to it when discussing programming-related things. That
applies to sciences too to a lesser degree. Anyways - first I'd suggest to get
close to these people. If they really like you they'll have a good reason to
speak English (-;

------
meerita
Yes.

I work for one company and we're a multi-language team. If needed, we all
speak in english. No one complained. Actually meetings start depending the
main actor, if he/she an english speaker, then we all start to talk in
english. Actually we speak in spanish, catalan, english and italian.

------
lightblade
Yes. I definitely think everyone should speak the official language local
country while at work. That's English for US and Mandarin Chinese if you're in
China.

I think speaking different languages at work can create a us vs them
atmosphere that's not good for a healthy work environment.

~~~
dalke
The US doesn't have an official local language. Some states do. For example,
Hawaiian is an official language of Hawaii.

Also, several states are de facto bilingual.

And then there's South Africa, with 11 official languages.

So I don't think your views are really all that generally applicable.

~~~
EpicEng
Yet it is the defacto language. It is the language you need to speak if you
wish to be successful (in general, of course there are outliers.) regardless,
that's not really the point. It is difficult for a team to function properly
if they're not speaking the same language. I know I wouldn't like it if my
entire team spoke something other than English most of the time. I would feel
like an outsider.

~~~
dalke
The point is the poster wrote "the official language", which is flawed logic
that reveals more of the poster's lack of knowledge in how the world works
than gives any meaningful advice. (The first two of the three words in that
quote don't apply.)

What you describe is a different scenario. For example, one of my clients was
a company in Sweden. Almost no Swedes were in the team. The de facto language
for the team was English, even though Sweden's official language is Swedish.
The poster's logic would insist that everyone speak Swedish (or one of
Sweden's minority languages), even though everyone knew English. While you
would say that's fine.

I've also worked for an Austrian company where nearly everyone spoke German
most of the time. (Not all of the time; unlike the main thread, I did have
chit-chat and work-related conversations. But coffee breaks and lunch were
mostly in German.) Okay, I was the outsider. I'm also the outsider when people
talk about bands, movies, and sports, since I know so very little about those
topics compared to most. That's life?

~~~
EpicEng
Agreed, grandfather was wrong to say "official language" (not really "flawed
logic", just wrong.) It's just being pedantic though; I knew what he was
getting at.

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auz
IF they can AND are polite AND wish to include English speakers. Don't sweat
it, learn Hindi fast if you really want your head filling with TV trivia etc
etc etc etc etc etc

------
mariuolo
Not necessarily English, but at least the same language.

I think it will harm the team cohesion otherwise.

