Foreign Languages in the Work Place

[Churchill]

Sack the foreign bastards and employ some more Brits!

[cailin maith]

Sack the foreign bastards and employ some more Brits!

[Diestl]

Put some tulip on your desk just before he leans over, he will put his hands in it and wont be doing that again.

[Churchill]

Sack the foreign bastards and employ some more Brits!

Sorry, just pissed off!

[Not So Wise]

Was always brought up to believe that in mixed company always speak the common language (if there is one), anything else is just pure bad manners and downright rude

[cailin maith]

Sorry, just pissed off!

Chin up buttercup

[Troll]

Hi,
Would be interested in other people's input on this one.

I am working in a test team, 6 testers and a test manager.

The team is pretty multi-cultural, A Brit, an Aussie, a Vietnamese, a Nigerian, two Indians and the Test Lead who is Indian,

Is the project in the UK- if so is this why UK nationals who are testers are having such a tough time at the moment?

Are you also the token white?

[dang65]

Was always brought up to believe that in mixed company always speak the common language (if there is one), anything else is just pure bad manners and downright rude

This rule makes things a lot less awkward for speakers of other languages as well, which I do hope they appreciate. Wherever they are in the world, they can simply look around the room, see that there is an English person present and immediately they will know which is the only possible common language to use.

[ContractTester]

The work place is in Australia.

I have never experienced this before. I worked in London in teams composed of 40% Africans, 40% Indians, and the rest a mixed bag of British, Antipodeans and Europeans, and it was an unspoken agreement that people spoke English at work and chatted in their own lingo at lunch breaks or after work.

Even when I worked in Amsterdam, the consensus was that in an English speaking site, people did not suddenly start chatting in Dutch and cut the rest of the team out of the conversation.

And its not about eaves-dropping on a personal conversation. 50% of their conversation is about work because I hear the common buzz words about our systems and team member's names sprinkled about in the conversation.

I am not into having head phones on because I pick up a lot of useful stuff about the systems from conversations going on in the open plan environment. Not everything we have to test is documented so we need to know what is coming our way. Headphones are for developers.

I can listen to about 5 different conversations in English at the same time and filter out what is not relevant while working at the same time.

Trying to listen to a foreign conversation is more distracting. I speak pretty good French, and understand enough Mandarin and German to get by pretty well in those countries, but unfortunately Hindi is not high on my list of languages that I want to learn.

I am going to give it to this guy with both barrels fairly soon, but what are the odds that he plays the racist card?

[Clippy]

The work place is in Australia.

I have never experienced this before. I worked in London in teams composed of 40% Africans, 40% Indians, and the rest a mixed bag of British, Antipodeans and Europeans, and it was an unspoken agreement that people spoke English at work and chatted in their own lingo at lunch breaks or after work.

Even when I worked in Amsterdam, the consensus was that in an English speaking site, people did not suddenly start chatting in Dutch and cut the rest of the team out of the conversation.

And its not about eaves-dropping on a personal conversation. 50% of their conversation is about work because I hear the common buzz words about our systems and team member's names sprinkled about in the conversation.

I am not into having head phones on because I pick up a lot of useful stuff about the systems from conversations going on in the open plan environment. Not everything we have to test is documented so we need to know what is coming our way. Headphones are for developers.

I can listen to about 5 different conversations in English at the same time and filter out what is not relevant while working at the same time.

Trying to listen to a foreign conversation is more distracting. I speak pretty good French, and understand enough Mandarin and German to get by pretty well in those countries, but unfortunately Hindi is not high on my list of languages that I want to learn.

I am going to give it to this guy with both barrels fairly soon, but what are the odds that he plays the racist card?

What makes you think a bunch of strangers on an internet forum are best placed to judge a situation that is unique to you?