Speaking at a conference in Dubai last week, I was struck by the ubiquity, confidence and fluency of non-native English speakers. Emiratis talked in English to Indians, Kazakhs to Egyptians.
I have written about the misunderstandings between native and non-native English speakers — and the non-natives’ relief when the born anglophones, with their incomprehensible phrasal verbs and figurative speech, are not there.
But what of the tens of millions of non-native speakers, whose daily conversations account for the majority of business conversations in English? Are they divided by levels of fluency and their striving for the best globally oriented jobs?