Are you an imposter when speaking or writing in English?

The challenges of writing in English when it’s not your first language.

Below is a transcript of the video.

In this video, I want to do something a little bit different.

I want to talk about the challenges of writing in English when it’s not your first language.

So if English is your second language. Or if you work with people whose first language isn’t English, or, frankly, if English is your first language and you’re simply interested in learning a bit more about the language you speak, you’ll find this video interesting.

And what’s prompted me to make this video is that I’ve had quite a few questions from those of you who write in English as your second language. 

And what I’m sensing is that there seems to be a real anxiety about whether you’ll ever be able to be a confident, persuasive writer in a second language. 

Here’s a typical question I got from one of you:

Can a non-native speaker work with English without feeling like an imposter?

So basically I have a three-word answer to that question: 

yes, yes and thrice yes. 

You can absolutely work with English as your second-language. 

And I want you to stop - I mean it - stop feeling like an imposter right now!

Promise? Good.

So here are 6 reasons why you’re not an imposter.

Starting with number 1: 

You’re not the imposter - I am

Now, let me throw a couple of statistics your way. 

So depending on where you look, figures estimate that roughly, nearly 370 million people speak English as their first language. 

But the total number of English speakers in the world is way, way, way bigger than that.

A whopping 1.35 billion people, in fact. 

So that means roughly 370 million speakers of English as a first language... 

and, what? About 980 million speakers of English as a second language.

So if you speak English as a second language, then you are massively, massively in the majority.

By, like, over 2 and a half, nearly 3 times as many.

So... if there are nearly 3 times as many people on planet earth who speak English as their second language…

as there are people, like me, who speak it as a first language...

well, then…whose language is it anyway? 

It’s not my language - it’s yours.

And so who’s really the imposter here? Could it be me, not you?

Anyway, that brings me to point 2, which is:

“Native speaker”: What does that even mean?

So the other thing to remember is that there is no such thing as the perfect English “English”.

There’s no pristine, ur-English that you as a “non-native” speaker are desperately hopelessly grappling to reach. And that we “native speakers”, on the other side of that barrier have smugly achieved.

In fact, if perfect English feels out of reach - that’s because it doesn’t exist.

Even for so-called “native” speakers, like me.

Let me explain what I mean with a handful of examples.

A couple from spoken English and then one from written English.

So spoken English first.

Now the greatest TV show ever made was “The Wire” - I will not accept otherwise!

And “The Wire” is set in Baltimore in the United States.

An English-speaking country, right?

Yet many people here in the UK - and possibly even in the US too - had to watch it with the subtitles on because they struggled to understand the English spoken in The Wire.

And there’s another very similar example even closer to home - my home at least. 

Way, way back in the 80s, there was a famous TV show on British TV called “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet”. 

The story was based on a bunch of bricklayers working in Germany. 

Again, half the people in the UK...

the vast majority of them “native” speakers, like me...

had to watch the show with the English subtitles on.

Now was that because the characters were speaking German? 

No, most of the characters were expats from Newcastle in the North of England.

A mere 283 miles north of where I’m standing right now, here in London. 

But the characters’ accent - called a Geordie accent - was so strong that people outside of Newcastle barely understood a word they were saying.

Finally, an example from the written language. 

A few years ago, I did a writing job for a trendy media firm in Australia and the average age of the employees was about 20 years younger than me.

Now, even though we spoke the same language, English, the client was initially sceptical that a little grey-haired woman on the other side of the planet could really capture their tone of voice.

Could I really write in English the way they used English?

Now, in the end, I ended up surprising them - delighting them, in fact, with how I was able to capture the vernacular of a bunch of trendy aussie media types in their 20s.

But I was only able to do it by reading a lot of things they themselves had written. 

And also by consulting the Urban Dictionary which is an online dictionary of slang and non-standard words. 

In other words, I had to learn their language. 

Their version of English.

The point about these examples is that all these people - the characters in “The Wire”…

the Geordies in “Auf Wiedersehen Pet”…

and the young, trendy media types in Melbourne, Australia…

all speak English. 

Different forms of English, yes, but English all the same. 

And within their communities, they are perfectly well understood. 

And who’s to say their form of English is any less valid - any less “standard” than so-called “standard” English? 

What even is “standard” English when you think of it like that?

Which brings me to point 3...

You don’t have an accent — I do

As we’ve touched on spoken English, I want to talk about the variety of spoken English that I use, especially because some of you have asked about my accent.

So I think I speak a fairly standard English. 

I was born in the north west of England, so do I have some northern vowels. 

For example, I will always say bath or path or photograph…

not barth or parth or photograrph.

That’s how my husband - who was born and bred in London - would say those words. 

But on me? That just sounds wrong. And awkward. And frankly a bit pretentious.

But, anyway, when I was growing up I didn’t realise I had an accent.

I just spoke like everyone else around me.

And it wasn’t until I left home and went to university - a university in the north, strangely enough - that I realised I had a northern accent because that’s when I started hanging out with people from the south. 

And I kind of had my full northern accent teased out of me by southerners.

So I used to say things like singing and dancing, which sounded normal to me.

But I didn’t realise I was - to their ears - over emphasising the final “g” in an almost comical way. 

That “g” in singing and dancing is sounded in the north west where I was born, but it’s sort of swallowed in “standard” southern English. 

Singin and dancin.

And today, I probably do swallow that “g” a bit more. 

Another thing that happened at university was studying Linguistics as part of my first degree and for that I had to learn to transcribe spoken language phonetically.

But the only correct answer on the exam was a transcription based on RP or received pronunciation - which you may have heard of - which at that time, maybe not now, I don’t know, I suspect things may have changed…

but certainly then... 

RP was considered “standard English” or the “queen’s English”.

Which, when you think about it, makes zero sense. 

The idea that the really weird type of English spoken by a single very posh old lady living a bizarre life in a palace is “standard”.

When millions of people were talking like me with their singings and dancings.

And all sorts of other accents all over the country. 

Anyway, that task of writing English phonetically was much harder for me than my fellow students in the south, because - as I discovered - my initial transcriptions were wrong because singing and dancing with an emphasised “g” was not RP - and so “wrong”.

Anyway, now I live in London. And today, I think I talk an accent many people might consider neutral. 

I don’t speak like the queen. 

I think maybe I speak a sort not quite southernish, not quite northernish type of English. 

So, I think, to my ears, very, very neutral. 

And you’d think - because of that - my accent is fairly easy to understand.

Yeah, you’d think that. 

But let me throw at you some reviews people have left of my online courses:

“This course is excellent, though I have some difficult[y] with british accent.”

“accent was not clear with some words.”

“I thought she was an american teacher, her accent is hard to follow for me.”

“My only problem is to understand the british accent.”

And my favourite

“Was pleasantly surprised by her accent.”

Who knew English with an English accent was so difficult to understand! 

Let alone could be surprisingly pleasant!

I think the point I’m trying to make here is that whatever accent you speak with someone will always find it more - or less - “correct”.

More or less difficult to understand.

We Brits might think Americans have an accent, after all, the language they speak is English with an American accent.

Not American with an English accent. 

But for many people around the world, brought up on Hollywood movies…

I’m the weird one. And I can totally understand that.

I think the point I’m trying to make here is about the idea that there’s one original English that “non native” speakers are constantly striving - and failing - to achieve.

Because if you are failing to achieve that standard, I am too. 

Because it’s a constantly moving target.

And, in fact, if you speak English with an Indian accent... 

or a Chinese accent... 

or an Italian or French accent…

that might actually be in your favour, especially if you’re talking to people from your own culture. 

I’m fairly sure I’d more readily understand an English person speaking Italian with an English accent than I would a “native” Italian-speaker. 

Something about the vowels just being closer to what my ears are attuned to, and that connection between words on a page and what I naturally hear. 

So if you’re a non-native speaker speaking English to other non-native speakers you may even have a bit of an advantage over us “native” speakers.  

You might actually be easier to understand - ever thought about it that way?

What’s more, point 4:

English is “English” because of non-native speakers! 

Look, even the English we speak in England today is a kind of mongrel, multinational language. 

It’s been influenced by Latin, Greek, French…

and a host of other languages.  

If it weren’t, we’d still be speaking the “English” of the Anglo-Saxons…

which can I remind you sounds a bit like this:

Hwæt! Ic swefna cyst secgan wylle,

hwæt me gemætte to midre nihte,

syðþan reordberend reste wunedon!

So in other words non-native speakers, whether through immigration or colonialism, are exactly the thing that’s made English the incredibly rich language it is today... 

...albeit a language where spelling is an absolute nightmare. 

Sorry about that.

But, you know what, English is still changing - thanks to that international influence! 

And I think I can see that happening before my very eyes.

I’m not a professional linguist, but let me give you some examples from my own experience working with large, international firms, of how I think the international nature of business English, is changing the language.

As I say, I'm not a professional linguist, so these are just personal observations.

But when I hear English “native” speakers - whatever that means... 

use a piece of business jargon like “learnings” it makes my ears bleed because, strictly speaking, “learning” is an uncountable noun - you can’t pluralise it. 

You can’t just put an “s” on the end of it and pretend it’s a word.

My immediate instinct is to think my fellow “native speakers” are just illiterate and ignorant and pretentious. 

And then... 

I remember how so many of my international students struggle with uncountable nouns.

I can’t tell you the number of times a Chinese or Indian or Korean student has asked me for my “feedbacks” or “advices” on an essay. 

Or have asked questions on how to avoid “jargons”. 

All of which are, strictly speaking, uncountable nouns. 

And so when I bristle at “learnings” I realise I have to check my privilege. And I start to wonder that maybe, maybe…

the ubiquity of “learnings” in business English is just an example of native speakers adopting a countable form of an uncountable noun.

And maybe that’s because they’ve heard it used by a “non-native” speaker.

And maybe, just maybe, “learnings” is becoming the “correct” standard form.

Ditto prepositions.

Those little words like in and on and to that indicate relationships of time and space.

For years I have winced every time a business exec talks about “reporting into” someone, instead reporting to them. 

It literally sounds obscene to me. 

Likewise, for years I’ve rolled my eyes at native English native speakers... 

who instead of saying they’re “talking about” a topic…

say they’re “talking around” it…

Which, to me, sounds like the complete opposite of what they mean.

To me it sounds like you’re actually discreetly trying to avoid addressing the topic.

I’ve written whole sneery blog posts on this stuff. 

But you know what?

I think about my own struggles to learn Italian, and especially when it comes to picking the right preposition - oh my word, they’re a nightmare.

But I think of my struggles and I think... 

maybe, maybe... 

those “native” speakers who mangle what I would deem the “correct” preposition in English have picked up the habit from an international colleague and absorbed it into their language.

And, you know, what? How wonderful is that?

How better to basically say, this is not my language - it’s ours…

And you, the “non-native speaker”...

have as much power and right to decide what’s “correct” as I have.

So we’ve mostly been talking about grammatical rules and proper accents. 

Now I want to talk about fuzzier issues - cultural factors that determine what we expect from communication. 

So point 5:

Communication is about so much more than the language you speak  

So as an English teacher at the University of Cambridge, I help international students with their writing and speaking.

Now, to get into the University of Cambridge, you obviously have to be pretty smart. You also need to have excellent English skills.

So the students I teach, yes, they struggle with their articles - the, a, an.

Yes, they don’t always pick the right preposition.

Yes, they may struggle with modals or tenses or vocab.

But for the most part, their language skills are incredibly sophisticated.

So what they often need most help with isn’t the grammar. The grammar is the easy bit.

What they most struggle with is expressing their ideas in a way that meets the expectations of an English academic audience. 

And that’s usually more about style and structure - and above all, clarity - than about facility with the language.

A colleague of mine often repeats a famous quote that: “Academic English is no one’s mother tongue”.

Even “native” English speakers have to learn it. 

So before teaching international students, I just assumed that the way I wrote academically was more or less universal.

For example, that insistence we have in English on clarity, concision and a really tight chain of logic, where ideas are presented in a very step by step way. 

But what I discovered is that ‘that’ is just one convention.

And, for example, other cultures may have a different way of expressing logic…

which to someone steeped in the Anglo tradition comes across as allusive and wordy and round-about.

So I guess the point here is that whatever language you’re writing in, you need to write in a way that is consistent with the conventions of the culture you’re writing in.

Whether that’s the conventions of your field - business writing is different from scientific writing, which is different from writing in the humanities for example.

Or the conventions of the country your audience is based in. 

So for example, what if you’re writing in English for a Chinese audience whether it’s business or academic.

Do you use a very clear, linear, English way of communicating, which may come across as patronising?

Or do you use a more “Chinese” approach?

Something that to my eyes might seem less linear and more roundabout.

I don’t know the answer to that…

but the point is that…

even if we’re talking about the softer cultural stuff, there isn’t necessarily one right way of doing things.

And who knows, different, more international styles and structures and approaches may become conventional within wider business or academic English. 

While we’re on the subject of my international students, I want to leave you with one final thought. 

Point 6:  

Correct grammar isn’t the be-all and end all

A question my students often ask is: “can I get a 1st or a distinction or whatever…

without perfect English”?

And my answer is absolutely yes.

And I know this because I’ve had students whose English grammar wasn’t perfect.

They mixed up their modals and articles and prepositions….

and they still went on to get top grades.

But the thing they did do was adopt an appropriately academic style and structure in their essays. 

So good grammar is important - but it’s not the be all and end all.

Phew! That was a long one!

Let me know in the comments what you thought of this video.

Did you enjoy it? 

What did you learn? 

What questions do you still have about communicating in English? 

Tell me what you think in the comments!

In the meantime, happy writing - and just remember. English is as much your language as it is mine.

And at the same time, you don’t own it, but neither do I.  

So in that sense, we’re all kind of imposters - and we’re all not imposters. 

I hope that makes sense! 

See you next week. Bye!

For more writing advice, enrol in my online course, Writing With Confidence, available at the Doris and Bertie Writing School.

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