Syndicate: The Great English Divide

[Syndicate admin <syndicate@v2.nl>]

Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 10:48:51 +1000
From: geert lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>
Subject: The Great English Divide

(from business week online)

The Great English Divide

In Europe, speaking the lingua franca separates the haves from the have-nots

Antonio Sanz might as well have won the lottery. In 1965, when the small, 
curly-haired Spaniard was 10, an American professor asked his parents if she 
might take the boy to the U.S. and enroll him in public school. They agreed. 
America seemed to offer a brighter future than the dairy farms where his father 
worked in the foothills north of Madrid. Sanz left, but came back to Spain every 
summer with stories from Philadelphia and boxes of New World artifacts: Super 
Balls, baseball cards, and Bob Dylan records.

His real prize, though, was English. Sanz learned fast, and by senior year he 
outscored most of his honors English classmates in the verbal section of the 
Scholastic Aptitude Test. In those days, back in his hometown of Colmenar Viejo, 
English seemed so exotic that kids would stop him on the street and ask him to 
say a few sentences. By the time he graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, 
N.Y., and moved back to Spain, American companies there were nearly as excited. 
He landed in Procter & Gamble Co.

Sanz, now 46 and a father of three, employs his Philadelphia English as an 
executive at Vodafone PLC in Madrid. But something funny has happened to his 
second language. These days, English is no longer special, or odd, or even 
foreign. In Paris, D?sseldorf, Madrid, and even in the streets of Colmenar 
Viejo, English has put down roots. "What else can we all speak?" Sanz asks.

BASIC TOOL. No surprise there. English is firmly entrenched nearly everywhere as 
the international language of business, finance, and technology. But in Europe, 
it's spreading far beyond the elites. Indeed, English is becoming the binding 
agent of a continent, linking Finns to French and Portuguese as they move toward 
political and economic unification. A common language is crucial, says Tito 
Boeri, a business professor at Bocconi University in Milan, "to take advantage 
of Europe's integrated labor market."

English, in short, is Europe's language. And while some adults are slow to 
embrace this, it's clear as day for European children. "If I want to speak to a 
French person, I have to speak in English," says Ivo Rowekamp, an 11-year-old in 
Heidelberg, Germany.

The implications for business are enormous. It's no longer just top execs who 
need to speak English. Everyone in the corporate food chain is feeling the 
pressure to learn a common tongue as companies globalize and democratize. These 
days in formerly national companies such as Renault and BMW, managers, 
engineers, even leading blue-collar workers are constantly calling and e-mailing 
colleagues and customers in Europe, the U.S., and Japan. The language usually is 
English, an industrial tool now as basic as the screwdriver.

But there's one fly in the ointment. While English is fast becoming a prereq for 
landing a good job in Europe, only 41% of the people on the Continent speak 
it--and only 29% speak it well enough to carry on a conversation, according to a 
European Commission report. The result is an English gap, one that divides 
Europe's haves from its have-nots. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Europeans 
brought peasants into the workforce by teaching them to read and write the 
national language. These days, the equivalent challenge is to master Europe's 
international language. Those that fail--countries, companies, and individuals 
alike--risk falling far behind.

How much is English worth? In jobs from offices to the factory floor, recruiters 
say that workers who speak English often command salaries 25% to 35% above those 
who don't. More important, they can aspire to a host of higher-level jobs that 
are off-limits to monolinguists. "English is an imperative," says Didier Vuchot, 
chairman of recruiter Korn/Ferry International in Europe.

A generation ago, this wasn't the case. Most European companies did the bulk of 
their business at home. They maintained only a small phalanx of English-speaking 
"international experts" to deal with bankers in London and machine shops in 
Chicago. Ambitious anglophones such as Antonio Sanz often landed at American 
multinationals. "I was with a bunch of aristocrats at Procter," Sanz recalls. 
"In Spain, they were the ones who spoke English."

That was when Europe boasted only a handful of multinational corporations. Now 
there are hundreds. When European governments freed up their economies during 
the 1980s and '90s, a host of newly private companies burst onto the scene. As 
they pushed for growth, giants such as Deutsche Telekom and France's Alcatel 
spread across borders in a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions. Suppliers 
followed them into foreign markets. In most of these companies, managers who 
didn't know English soon found themselves confined to sleepy domestic 
operations. Their English-chattering colleagues, by contrast, flew the globe and 
advanced.

The need for a lingua franca is most pressing for global technology players. "We 
need a common language," says Alcatel CEO Serge Tchuruk. "There aren't many 
choices." So in the early '90s, Alcatel and Finland's Nokia embraced English as 
the corporate language. In Europe, where the Germans and French have long 
battled for supremacy, English also makes political sense: It's the closest 
thing to linguistic neutral territory. When France's Rhone Poulenc and Germany's 
Hoechst joined forces to found Aventis two years ago, they set up headquarters 
in the border city of Strasbourg. And they further defused cultural tensions by 
adapting English as the company language.

The other European languages are hardly dying, of course, and British and 
American managers working in Europe would do well to pick up bilingual skills. 
But new forces, including the Internet, are pushing Europe toward a common 
language. Take KPNQwest, the pan-European phone company based in the 
Netherlands. There, all e-mail must be written in English, even communiqu?s 
between German engineers. Why? CEO John A. McMaster sees e-mail as strings of 
communication that often spread through the corporate system. "If you shift the 
language from Spanish to German to Italian, you leave out lots of people," he 
says.

As companies like KPNQwest cross one border after another, companies across the 
Continent are doubling as language schools. At Germany's gas and water utility, 
RWE, fully 30% of the employees are busy studying English--a necessity for 
advancement in a company that operates in more than 100 countries. At 
Ravensburger, a German game-maker, human-resources officials used to conduct 
interviews in German. Now, they need English to interview applicants in Poland 
or Britain, says Martin Hurtha, personnel chief. Europeans who don't know 
English, says Lorenzo Targetti, CEO of Targetti Sankey, an Italian lighting 
company, are "running a marathon in house shoes."

More and more, even the rank and file must know English--or risk missing out on 
vital job opportunities. For example, 1 1/2 years ago the Dutch cable company 
United Pan-European Communications was building a $20 million TV studio in 
Amsterdam. This job required scores of electricians, far more than UPC could 
find in the Netherlands. Only a two-hour train ride south of Amsterdam, however, 
in the rust belt of French-speaking Belgium and northern France, plenty of 
electricians were available. But the Dutch and American managers at UPC wanted 
everyone at the project to speak and understand the same language. So UPC flew 
in a platoon of electricians from Britain, put them up in hotels during the 
week, and sent them home every weekend.

Across all sectors and ranks, non-English-speakers face a harder hunt for fewer 
and poorer jobs. Many of the leading employers in Europe, including Vivendi 
Universal and CAP Gemini rarely even consider job applicants without English. 
Secretaries who lack English can expect to make 30% less--if they're lucky 
enough to find a job, says temporary-work agency Manpower Inc. And for 
headhunters such as Sarah Mulhern of Spencer Stuart in Paris, English is not a 
option anymore: "It's a requirement." She recalls working with one French 
technical whiz who didn't know English. She landed him a job at Excite--but only 
after he had completed an intensive language course.

True, line workers in many manufacturing plants can still get by in their native 
language. But workers who want to advance find themselves back at 
school--learning English. At DaimlerChrysler, workers seeking a promotion to 
team leader on the shop floor take English classes after hours. Even union 
representatives duck into English classrooms at the company's Unterturkheim 
plant. Says one union official at the plant: "We need it to speak to union 
officials in America."

Europe's English divide closely mirrors its economy. The wealthy parts--Sweden, 
the Netherlands, western Germany, and cosmopolitan cities such as Paris and 
Milan--are also rich in English, and getting richer. English-poor regions, from 
the Mediterranean to Eastern Europe, lose out on foreign investment and jobs. 
Only 5% to 10% of the workforce at Italian banks speaks good English, estimates 
Michele Appendino, co-founder of European venture fund Net Partners. If those 
banks merge with German or French banks, as expected, the common language will 
likely be English. Those who don't speak it risk becoming foreigners in their 
own banks--if they're lucky enough to hold on to their jobs.

For the flip side, look no further than Ireland. It has enjoyed job growth 
averaging 5% a year since the mid-'90s, with many of the new employment 
resulting from U.S. investments. Ireland's greatest advantage? Its young, 
English-speaking workforce, says Aidan Brady, CEO of Citigroup in Dublin, is the 
main reason Citigroup put down roots there.

"GONERS." The pressure to be an anglophone has resulted in a bonanza for 
English-language schools. Barcelona's Wall Street Institute, for example, has 
opened 35 new language centers throughout Europe in the past 1 1/2 years, making 
a total of roughly 300 schools across the Continent. Students pay an average of 
$1,400 for 120 hours of courses. "They've realized that they're goners if they 
don't take English classes," says Wall Street Institute Paris President Natanael 
Wright. European governments are also pitching in. In France, Italy, and Spain, 
political leaders are pushing to introduce their nations' children to English at 
earlier ages. Nearly 300,000 Spaniards are piling into state language schools 
this year.

But teaching English to the whole Continent is no easy task. Teachers are 
scarce: Their English often provides them with more lucrative opportunities than 
teaching in a public school. "All our English teachers are getting swallowed up 
by DaimlerChrysler," complains one school administrator near the company's 
Stuttgart headquarters. When they don't have the chance to learn English in the 
classroom, high school graduates from Europe's south and east flock to Britain 
and Ireland to wait tables and learn English on the cheap.

FRENCH FARCE. A rearguard action is being fought against the English advance. 
When French Defense Minister Alain Richard approved English as the common 
language of a joint French-German army battalion, Le Figaro dubbed him "the 
gravedigger" of the French language. In Brussels, the European Commission is 
bending over backwards to avoid the impression that it favors English, even as 
English establishes itself as the de facto language of the EC. Its current 
effort, known as Europe's Year of Languages, pushes English as one of 11 
languages, no more important than Greek or Finnish.

Europe's leaders, of course, know how vital English is: Just like CEOs and 
software engineers, they need it to talk to each other. Politicians such as 
Spanish Prime Minister Jos? Maria Aznar and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, who both 
require interpreters, miss out on English-language dinner chatter and one-to-one 
schmoozing at Euro-gatherings. One Italian language school, International House, 
offers English lessons by phone to politicians on the run.

The English divide is age-related, too. According to a European Union study, 67% 
of Europeans between 15 and 24 say they can speak English, compared with only 
18% of those over 55. Thus Europe's relentless drive for English empowers kids 
around the Continent, wreaking havoc with hierarchies in companies and families 
alike. Take a look at the families of Spaniards and Italians visiting Paris: The 
English-speaking children appear to be in charge, ordering food in English for 
their parents, and arranging early-morning taxis to the airport.

But what's amusing in families is dead serious in the work-place. 
Thirty-nine-year-old Nadine Koulecheff, a high school graduate in Paris, saw in 
the late '90s that one answering machine could put an end to her career as a 
receptionist. She spent three months in a 40-hour-per-week English class 
associated with France's National Employment Office. At the end, she 
successfully interviewed in English for a secretarial job at a medical 
laboratory. "My English got me the job," she says. She uses it every day--mostly 
to talk to her Italian boss.

That's the Europe that's taking shape. For the ever-growing masses of English 
speakers, basic communication is now a breeze. The Babel of old hardly 
interferes, and instead adds richness and texture to life in Europe. But for 
those on the other side of the Great Divide, Europe's unification--its 
opportunities and pitfalls alike--is still shrouded in mystery. The operating 
instructions for Europe, it's now clear, are written in English.

By Stephen Baker and Inka Resch in Paris, with Kate Carlisle in Rome and 
Katharine A. Schmidt in Stuttgart



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