Episode 19: Business English communication across cultures

intercultural-business-english-communication-english-german

Welcome to the Smart Startup English Podcast!

Our goal is to help startup professionals take their English from intermediate to advanced in just 10 minutes at a time. In each episode, we’ll talk about a topic related to the startup world, and we’ll learn some vocabulary that you can use to sound more natural in your day-to-day business interactions in English.

In this episode, we’re talking about what happens when communication between entrepreneurs is shaped by their native language and their native culture.

To illustrate how intercultural communication plays a role in business, we’ll focus on the difference between native German speakers and native American English speakers.

First, have a look at this scenario:

A native German speaker says: I don’t think this will work.

They mean: I don’t think this will work.

A native American English speaker says: Yes, this is a good idea. It might not work as well, but we could give it a try.

They mean: I don’t think this will work.

Can you tell the difference between these two communication styles?

In episode 19, we talk about three differences in communication that contribute to cultural misunderstandings.

We’ll also teach you 11 Business English terms you need to know to talk about intercultural communication.

Here are a few of the expressions we use in this lesson:

to put someone at ease
to give ground
to build rapport

Here’s the episode audio.

Here is another episode in which we talk about the German startup ecosystem.

Episode 5 – German startups are going global

This episode was inspired by a series of posts written by John Otto Magee for Handelsblatt. If you want to read more about the difference in the way Germans and Americans communicate in a business environment, I highly recommend starting with this series.

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If you want to keep practicing the words you’ve learned in this lesson, sign up below to get the episode transcript for free. We’ll also let you know when we release new episodes, and we’ll give you access to ten free Business English audio lessons and worksheets.