You passed C1. You run meetings in English. You write reports that nobody sends back with questions.

So why did Tuesday's call still go sideways?*

Let me answer that with a story where the language wasn't even English.

I couldn't make myself understood in my own language

A few years ago I was teaching Technical English to a group of German engineers. We worked in English, obviously. But at one point I switched to German to explain something faster.

My native language.* Their native language. And they looked at me blankly.

Baubewilligung.That is what I said. They say [BOLD]Baugenehmigung[/BOLD]. Both mean building permit.

Beistrich. That is what I said. They say [BOLD]Komma[/BOLD]. I am an English teacher, and I could not say the word "comma" to a room of Germans.

So ein Topfen.* That is Austrian for "that's rubbish" or "that's unfortunate" (depending on how you say it). Nobody knew what Topfen was, and even after I explained it means Quark, the expression still made no sense to them. The words were the smaller problem.

I am Austrian. They were German. Same mother tongue, different language.

Nothing about my German improved that day. What changed was that I learned which words that room used.

It was never the language

So what actually went wrong?

Not my German. Every word I used was correct German. It was correct Austrian German, which is a real variety with real dictionaries behind it.

What I didn't have was the local vocabulary.

Fluency gives you the language. It does not give you the words this particular group of people has agreed to use.

Punch list, snag list, deficiency list

Now put that back into English, on an international project.

A contractor finishes a section of work. Someone walks the site* and writes down everything still to be fixed before handover. That document has a name:

Punch list in the United States

Snag list, or snagging list, in the UK and Ireland

Deficiency list in Canada, though punch list travels there too

Defect list in Australia and New Zealand

One document. The same defects. Several names, and nobody involved thinks their name is the unusual one.

It goes further than countries. Two firms in the same city will run the same process under different words, because someone chose a term twenty years ago and it stuck. Change employer and the vocabulary changes with you. Join a new client's project and it changes again.

This is the part nobody warns you about. You spend years getting your English to a level where you can hold a technical argument, and then you walk into a new project and spend the first fortnight* working out what these particular people call things.

That is not a gap in your English. That is the job.

Even native speakers have to do this

Catherine Stagg-Macey grew up in South Africa with English parents, speaking English at home, and moved to England as an adult. Within her first year, her boss took her aside* and told her she was being far too direct, something nobody in South Africa had ever said to her.

Her English was not the problem. She had simply walked into a room that used the language differently, and nobody had handed her the list.

I talked to her about it on the podcast, and we went further into what it costs you when you insist on being right: the full conversation with Catherine and do you want to be right, or do you want a relationship?.

There's a system behind the madness

Here's what I want you to take from this. You are not behind. You are doing the thing every engineer on an international project has to do, and most of them are doing it by trial and error* over months.

It's faster than that if you do it deliberately.

Keep a glossary from day one. Not a mental note. A file. Every time someone uses a term for a thing you already have a word for, write both down. Two weeks of this and you'll have the room's vocabulary in front of you.

Ask "what do you call it here?" rather than "what does that mean?" Those two questions sound similar and land completely differently. The first says you know the concept and want the local word. The second says you don't know the concept. You almost always know the concept.

Mirror the words the room repeats. Whatever they call the document, call it that, even if your last project called it something else. You're not giving anything up. You're removing one thing that can go wrong.

That's what I teach, and grammar is where it starts. Technical English has a simplified, logical structure underneath it, and once you can see that structure, the rest gets much easier. Understand the system, then use the system, then play with the system. Tenses and sentence structure are stage one. Reading a room and adjusting to how it speaks is stage three. Nobody skips to the end.

So what's the point of fluency?

Fluency gets you into the room. It's worth having, and if you're reading this, you've probably worked hard for it.

It just isn't the finish line, because there isn't one. Every new company, every new project, every new set of colleagues comes with its own vocabulary, and you'll adapt again. That's not a sign you never really learned English. It's what working internationally is.

The engineers who find this easy aren't the ones with the best grammar. They're the ones who've stopped expecting to arrive.*

If you want the method rather than another few years of trial and error, that's what the Technical English course is for. Small group, live, built for engineers who already work in English and want to work in it well.

If you'd rather talk it through first, book a free 15-minute call and tell me what your projects look like.

Language Notes

Go sideways: when something goes wrong in a way you didn't plan for. A meeting that goes sideways hasn't failed completely, it has just stopped going where you wanted.

Native language and mother tongue: these mean the same thing, the language you grew up speaking. "Native language" is the more common phrasing in professional writing today.

So ein Topfen: an Austrian expression meaning "that's rubbish" or "what nonsense". Topfen is the Austrian word for the soft cheese Germans call Quark, but the expression has nothing to do with cheese. Idioms work like this in every language, which is why you cannot translate them word by word and expect them to survive.

Walk the site: to go through a construction site in person and inspect it. Not simply walking, but inspecting as you go.

Fortnight: two weeks. British and Irish English. Americans do not use it, which is a small demonstration of the point this article is making.

Take someone aside: to speak with a person privately, away from the group, usually about something awkward.

Trial and error: learning by attempting something, getting it wrong, adjusting, and trying again. Common in English, and something engineers do constantly without naming it.

Arrive (you never arrive): here this does not mean reaching a place. It means reaching a final, finished level of a skill.

FAQ