The Spanish people are finding it hard to compete in the international job market but it’s not their fault. Since the 1930s the Spanish culture and, inevitably the language, has discarded formality for the concept of egalitarianism: the idea of not “creating distance between speakers.”
Maria Irene Moyna, an Hispanic Linguistics Professor in Texas, says, “The Spanish formal ‘you’ has been in retreat since the 1930s and it is possible that ‘Usted’ will no longer be used a hundred years from now.”
Read the article HERE
And it is not just the use of the ‘Usted’ form.
It is all too common to get emails and letters from Spanish companies, at a professional level, unsigned and unaddressed. That is why Spanish people find it so hard to adapt to a company that communicates internationally.
It wasn’t always so! It wasn’t so long ago that Spain was the greatest power in the world and the language was incredibly rich and nuanced.
As an example: ‘Te encomiendo a Dios’, which meant ‘I commend you to God’ became the now common ‘Adios’. Of course, there have been similar examples of conceptual devolution in British English but where precision of meaning and where complex packets of information must be communicated, British English has retained its formality.
And the problems for Spanish speakers, who want to work internationally in business and the professions, doesn’t end there! Digital Writing Assistants (Grammarly, Word etc) are programmed to flag Multi-Clause Sentences and the Passive Voice as being grammatically wrong so you can’t rely on AI to help you.
As an example, if you are making a request in Professional English, it is considered a sign of poor education to simply use the imperative form. To sound polite and reasonable it is expected that the writer will use the ‘indirect form’.
Here at Libertad Communications we run workshops to help Spanish students and English expats learn Professional English by learning the music and rhythm of the language rather than learning lists of grammatical rules that nobody ever remembers.
- Working with multi-clause sentences
- The importance of passive voice
- Indirect in formal language
- Modals in formal requests
- Changing word order to change emphasis
- The invisible zero and indefinite article practice
The secret is that you can’t learn professional English by memorising the rules; you have to practice and make the music of the language your own.
Want to practice your Business and Professional English in small workshops, get in touch today.