Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

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> Can you with 100% confidence tell that all companies in all cases between those countries do business in English?

No, but in every one of those cases English is the way to bet.

> What about a Belgian company from Wallonia and a French partner? Or Luxemburg and Wallonia?

Almost certainly French because it’s the working language of both companies. If people share a native language they’ll use that. Otherwise the default is English. It’s not certain that they’ll use English but Siemens doesn’t expect its international partners to have German speaking partners for dealing with it; it does expect its executives to speak English.

Just as science has a lingua franca so does business. It is English.

The only English speaking country in the EU is Ireland. Many people in France, Italy or Spain do not speak English, at least not beyond elementary school level. It's even worse in countries such as Greece, Romania or Poland. It's hard to do business that way. So we use a lot of Google translate, but contracts are always in the native language.

Minor nitpick, but over 90% of the Dutch population can read/write/speak English. It's compulsory education.

And also basic levels of German and French. Outside of tech I actually hear from multiple sources German is an important language for trade between medium-sided companies, to Germany of course but also a large portion of the other eastern EU members.

Malta also has English as an official language.

This is all true but as an American (I grew up speaking a different not European language), Europeans' ability to switch languages is interesting/fun.

Once I had a business meeting in Switzerland. It was all in English (for me, the American), but at one point they were speaking German to each other. And later in the hallway, they switched to speaking French with the lawyer who was there with me. And at lunch in the restaurant attached to the office, the Swiss German host ordered his food in Italian.

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