“GOOD NIGHT, MADAM!” Was the Shocking Greeting I Received….

When connecting for the first time with a  foreign female English speaker on Facebook, GOOD NIGHT, MADAM!  was the momentarily shocking first greeting I received.  I soon realized she didn’t speak English very well and thought she was being polite.

After speaking with her for some time, I suggested a better greeting the next time she spoke with a native English speaker would be something like, “Hello, how are you?”  I explained that, in English, “good night” actually means “goodbye” and that a “madam” is a woman who runs a house of prostitution.  I explained that I understood these were not her meanings, but suggested other greetings, nevertheless.

Madam Dee Flowers

She was quite surprised at this information.  She asked me if “madam” in English is not the same as “madame” in French.  Since she’s from a French-speaking country, women one does not know are always addressed the the single word “Madame…” as a form of politeness.  She mentioned some very old-fashioned English novels (from mid-1800’s) which also seemed to use this form of address.  I explained that those novels were just about  the only place you might find that form of address used these days.

She said she’d never heard the other meaning of the word “madam.”  I asked if she’s had an instructor who taught them to say that in English.  She said no, that it was her own idea of what she might say to be polite.

She asked me if “madam” was not correct if there was a word she should use instead.  I explained that we don’t usually use a word to replace madam, except when we actually know the person’s name, in which case we might add “Miss Green” or “Mrs. Green,” for example.  She was surprised and thought that every language must use such a word to address anyone as a form of politeness.  I did say that in the American South, they sometimes use “ma’am,” which is an abbreviated form of the old-fashioned word “madam,”  but that it is mostly a regional usage.

This is a perfect example of how someone from one culture can go out of their way to be polite, yet achieve disastrous results.  Someone else might have taken immediate offense and not taken the time to think about the speaker’s intention.

–Lynne Diligent

Why These People Will Never Be Hired By an American Company

Would YOU hire any of these foreign applicants? Each of the following practically SCREAMS “I want a job but I am completely incompetent in the language–“Don’t hire me, or this is how I would communicate with your clients in English….”  None of these applicants seems to realize that IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DETAILS.

These examples (names changed) come from a job board in Morocco, from people looking for jobs with  American companies:

1. “I’m a student at Ben Messik University in casablanca. i got my DEUG in English literature and i’m intrested in having a job with you.”

American Employer Reaction: Casablanca is not even captitalized, interested is misspelled, and no American company would have a clue what DEUG means. “i” is not capitalized in two places.

2. “iam 23/m iam looking for any chance to work in usa in any think i have a experionce and i speak english not bad”

American Employer Reaction:  This person clearly doesn’t know that a sentence must be started with a capital letter and finish with a period. “iam” is not even a word. The country is not even written correctly. It must be all in capitals with periods following each letter, and preceded by “the,” as in “the U.S.A.” The word “i” must NEVER be written in lower case. Experience is misspelled. English is missing a capital letter. It is a run-on sentence instead of two clear sentences.

3. “Hello; my name is mohamed saddiki, i work for the Marriott Company in Myrtle Beach South carolina as a Laundry Assistant Director. I would like o have a job with one of the American companies or Agencies in Morocco. Thanks.”

American Employer Reaction:  This person lives in America, yet hasn’t even learned that his own name needs to have capital letters! Carolina is missing a capital letter and to is misspelled as o. Agencies should not be capitalized. YES, even a laundry director is expected to know these things in an American company.

4. “my name is hicham, american citizen (probably a dual-citizen) looking for job with one of the american companies in rabat, morocco”

American Employer Reaction:  Did not start sentence with a capital letter, doesn’t even know to capitalize his own name, or the word American, nor the words Rabat and Morocco. Does not put a period at the end of the sentence.

5. Hi, Im mehdi bouaziz I study english at cady ayyad college and I wish to work in english copanies or hotels

American Employer Reaction:  I’m is lacking an apostrophe.  This person doesn’t even know that his name should be capitalized.  The words Cady, Ayyad, College and English all need to be capitalized.  Companies is misspelled.  There is no period at the end of the sentence.

6. “Hello, first to start this off, I am american living in the USA, and looking to make my life in Morocco. I am fluent in english, spanish. I can speak, read and write a bit of french as well. I am very motivated, hard worker, flexable, and i will make a full commitment to the company that will hire me. I currently working for a academy out of maryland as an account manager which i have been here over 3 years. At the current moment i am working on my B.S. degree in accounting. my past and current experiences has been, account manager, payroll manager, bookkeeper and regional sales. i have plus over 10 years in accounting field. and looking for a position in morocco prefer casablanca, rabat or setat.in a american company or moroccan company, but i dont speak moroccan yet. in god willing i hope that i can. you can reach me at sweetlove2792@yahoo.com only if you think that you make me an offer. please only serious commitments i am not here to play around. i travel two times in a year to casablanca morocco, so if there is a need to meet that would not be an issue. salaam”

American Manager Reaction:  Even if this person is born in America (even worse), they clearly didn’t learn much in school.  Lack of nearly all necessary captials. English, Spanish, Maryland, Morocco (2x), Casablanca (2x), Rabat, Setat, American, Moroccan (2x),  God,  and Salaam are not captialized.  First words of sentences are not capitalized.  The word “i” is never captialized, as it must always be.  USA is not written correctly with periods between the letters.  Says “a” instead of “an” academy, and “a american company” instead of an American company. Leaves words out of the middle of sentences.  Doesn’t leave spaces after periods at the ends of sentences.  Don’t is missing the apostrophe.  Has 10-15 years of work experience in the U.S., yet cannot write at the standard expected of an 8-year-old child in America (using correct capital letters).  Has an extremely inappropriate email address, which alone would preclude her from being contacted.  This person claims to be serious, but who would ever believe she is serious with a post like this? Who, from an American company in Morocco, would EVER call this person? NO ONE.

7.  iam pleased to write this words to directors of american companies and agencies in morocco to ask for job that requires the english skills;in communication or in writing. i would to inform you that i am 23 years old, i obtained my university diploma(licence) in english department in the hassanII university in casablanca in 2008, as well i can speak and write frensh and arabic.Besides this, i have some computer-using abilities such as microsoft words, excel, powerpoint, and navigating in the internet. Concerning my professionnal experiences, i had an important experience in an anglophone callcentre in casablanca in august 2006, and at the present time, i am working as a cashier in the shop of petrolium stationin casablanca as temporary job. Finally, i will be so delighted to receive an ansewer from you as soon as possible.

American Employer Reaction:  There are just as many, and similar-type errors in this paragraph as in Example Six above.   Run-on sentences, spelling errors, no attention to capitals of any type, several words run together without spaces.  NO ONE would consider calling this person, either.

When applying for an international job, in ANY language, it’s the DETAILS which make ALL the difference.  While the examples in this post apply to English-language applicants, the same principles no doubt hold true for any language in which the applicant is not a native speaker.

Applicants are ignorant of what is required, and many teachers are equally ignorant in terms of not emphasizing these skills with their students.  Even supposing any companies happened upon this website, does ANYONE seriously think that ANY of the above people have the REMOTEST chance of being contacted???

My TWO important points in this post:

1.  Foreign teachers of English need to start paying attention to these details of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling, and to  MARKING THEIR STUDENTS OFF FOR EACH AND EVERY TIME A STUDENT MAKES THESE PUNCTUATION OR CAPITALIZATION MISTAKES. This is what we, as native-language teachers, do with American or British children, from the time they are seven years old. When you first teach the spelling of a proper noun, if they write the spelling correctly, but don’t capitalize it, then it is MARKED WRONG (even if the actual spelling is correct). Every time “i” or the first letter of a sentence is not capitalized, it is -1. Every time a period is forgotten, it’s -1. When they get two or three papers back with a big fat ZERO score, they start to pay attention QUICKLY.  Furthermore, after the teacher makes these corrections, each student needs to REWRITE their sentences or essays with all the required punctuation, and DO IT CORRECTLY, as well as to understand the WHY of each correction.  I would say that foreign teachers do not realize that capitalization and punctuation is JUST AS IMPORTANT as correct grammar.  (And yes, it IS normal for American and British teachers to spend MANY hours of their OWN time outside of class correcting these papers.)

I’m sure there are foreign teachers out there paying attention to these things.  But my experience in North Africa these past 20 years has shown me that many teachers in this part of the world give little importance to these issues.  I have been continually amazed by many of those I know with university degrees in English who tell me, “I don’t pay any attention to punctuation or capital letters.”  But when I ask further, most of these people tell me that their high school instructors and university instructors didn’t pay attention to any of these details, either.

As an example, in past years, my own daughter (a dual-citizen, and a native speaker of English who was in a North African school with a daily English class) came home from both her secondary-level English class in a private school, AND from another class at a private language center (both taught by teachers from the local North African country), neither of the teachers had even marked as wrong my daughter’s forgetting to put periods at the end of sentences!  When I had a “fit” about it, my daughter told me that EVEN THE TEACHER did not bother to put periods on the board!!!  Applicants are ignorant of what is required, and many teachers are equally ignorant in terms of not emphasizing these skills with their students.

2.  If you are a student of English and have an instructor who is not paying attention to these details, or even teaching them, be aware that you are getting a VERY INFERIOR education which will never serve you well in the international job market.  Students need to insist that their teachers correct their papers in terms of all the little details, and then take time to rewrite those papers correctly (keeping both copies for reference).

Most Important:  If you are posting something on a job board, sending a CV or resumé, or communicating in writing with ANY potential employer, by all means, have a teacher or a native speaker review the piece of communication for correctness before sending it or posting it!

–Lynne Diligent

Cultures Vary on Whether Management and Labor Goals Need to Be Oppositional in Nature

At the age of 19, I was highly disturbed by a business instructor’s statement, in an Introduction to Business class,  that management’s goals are always in opposition to labor’s goals.  When I asked why the two sides couldn’t work together for common goals and mutual benefit, my instructor replied that the two sides must have oppositional goals in order for each side to be considered to be doing its job well.  While I understood the reasoning he presented, the idea of oppositional labor relations continued to disturb me for many years.

Thirty-seven years later, I find myself reading Working for the Japanese: Inside Mazda’s American Auto Plant, by Fucini and Fucini. What I now realize is that the model my American business professor espoused was based on an American cultural point-of-view, which is most definitely NOT the point-of-view taken by other successful cultures.

Solidarity House, Headquarters of the UAW

In America, unions are not organized by company, but are instead organized broadly through many companies, such as the UAW (United Auto Workers). At the height of their power, they had elaborate work rules, over 100 job classifications (for which workers were not allowed to switch tasks or help out in other areas even if currently idle in their own areas), and an antagonistic attitude toward management.

Mazda Plant in Flat Rock, Michigan

When Mazda decided to open a plant in Michigan (the most heavily unionized state in the United States), they decided to work directly with the UAW by forming “study teams.”  When the workers and union representatives spent 30 days in the Mazda plant in Hofu (near Hiroshima) in 1982, it was the most modern and efficient auto-making plants in the world.  A small number of Japanese workers produced a large number of autos each year with half the number of workers required in an American auto plant.

“As Judson surveyed the plant, he could not help but marvel at its technological efficiency.  There were robots everywhere he looked.  They were welding car bodies and applying primer paint.  They were installing tires and transporting spare parts from the loading docks to work stations on the final assembly line…only 40 Mazda employees oversaw an operation that was as highly automated as anything in the worldwide automobile industry.” (Fucini, p. 20)

Mazda's Hofu plant

“But Judson (UAW representative) was impressed by more than Hofu’s technology.  The workers at the plant went about their jobs with a speed and purposefulness that he and the other American visitors had rarely witnessed.  The movements of every worker were carefully choreographed to avoid wasted time and motion.  The Mazda workers never hesitated when reaching for their tools because every tool was stored in its own specially-designated place close to the assembly line.  They never waited idly, as American workers often did,  for work to come down the line to them.   When a production employee completed his primary job at Hofu, he immediately busied himself with other tasks, until the next vehicle arrived at his work station.”  (Fucini, p. 20)

What was happening here, was that rather than focusing on wages and benefits, as American unions do, this union was focusing on keeping the economy strong in order to protect the job security of union members.  “The Japanese union believed it had a responsibility to help increase Mazda’s productivity, and improve its competitiveness.”  (Fucini, p. 21)

“Under this philosophy, the union and management were not adversaries, as they were in America, but partners, each working to create a successful company.”  (Fucini, p. 21)  The difference was that all Japanese autoworker unions are company unions; thus, their fortunes are linked absolutely to those of the automaker.

Assembly line in Mazda's Flat Rock Michigan plant

Mazda’s Japanese management, in agreeing to work with the UAW in the Flat Rock plant wrested 15% salary concessions from workers for the first three years, as well as the right to transfer workers from job-to-job, to redesign jobs when they saw fit, and to work overtime as they saw necessary.  “Mazda wanted the power to rotate employees freely from day to evening shifts as it did in Japan.”  (Fucini, p. 17)  When the UAW said that morale would be destroyed if workers did not know whether they would be working days or evenings from one week to the next, Mazda management compromised by the right to rotate any employee to a different shift for three months out of the year.   In the Mazda plant, managers would also be allowed to do “production jobs” in peak periods as necessary.  In return, Mazda agreed in a formal contract to not lay off employees unless the circumstances were so severe as to threaten the long-term financial viability of the company’s American plant.  (Fucini, p. 17)

Mazda hired its American workers in a very unusual way.  They had every hourly employee participate in psychological role-playing exercises and group problem-solving sessions.

Participation in role-playing exercises

An example of a problem the groups were asked to solve in the interview process was to develop a plan for counseling an imaginary Mazda employee who was always getting into trouble with his co-workers.  The purpose of these tests was to determine how well an applicant worked within a group, because Mazda wanted people who could become part of a permanent team where manager team-leaders worked right alongside hourly workers.  According to the book’s authors, “Mazda has at least succeeded in its goal of hiring a ‘special work force’ for its American plant. (Fucini, p. ix)

In reading this book, I felt a personal vindication of my question to my business instructor so many years ago.  Although it is unusual, management and labor can indeed work together as a team for the good of all.  American labor-management relations seem to be hampered by a particular cultural perspective that the two must always be always be in opposition.

For more current information on what has since happened with Mazda’s Flat Rock plant, see here.

–Lynne Diligent

Why Foreigners Sometimes Think that Americans View the World as Geography Cartoons Depict

What Americans are first taught about the world as children. This looks like a 1970-2005 point-of-view.

These maps represent what Americans are first taught about the world as children.

For a majority of Americans (speaking as an American now overseas) these maps are maps about feelings, rather than about knowledge.

It’s true that there are some Americans who never progress beyond this viewpoint, but the majority of American adults are not quite this uneducated.  Among those who are, it comes from the “We’re number one!” mentality that pervades what children are taught about America (or at least were until recently).

This view of the world looks more like how Americans felt in the 1950s and 1960s.

No matter how knowledgeable we become, it’s true that we can look at maps like this and understand the reasons they are drawn that way immediately–from our first knowledge as children.  That’s what makes them cartoons, that some of those feelings stay with us forever,  in spite of our knowledge.

Anyone who lived through the Reagan years certainly remembers the country feeling just like this!

–Lynne Diligent

Europeans Wonder: How Can Minimum-Wage Workers in America Side with the Republican Party?

My British, European, and Middle Eastern friends often ask me how it is that minimum-wage level workers often side with fiscal conservatives at the voting booth.  They wonder how and why the minimum-wage workers often vote against their own economic interests.

American sociologist James Petras addresses this issue when he explains that unionization in America has taken a different path between public and private-sector workers.   Public-sector workers have secured and maintained greater social benefits and wage increases, while private-sector workers have lost ground.

“The public sector workers draw on public financing to fund their ‘corporate interests’ while private sector workers are forced to pay increased taxes, because of regressive fiscal legislation. The result is an apparent or real conflict of interest between well-organized public workers organized around a narrow set of (self) interests and the mass of unorganized private sector workers who, unable to increase their wages via class struggle, side with “fiscal conservatives” (funded by big business) to demand cutbacks from public sector workers.”

So, unlike British and European systems, private-sector workers do not look to the government to “protect” their rights as workers.  Instead, they have been convinced that it is the government itself, taxes themselves, and government workers themselves that are the sources of society’s economic ills.

Government workers (who are jealously seen by many as having the highest salaries and benefits; yet are generally viewed as  incompetent, and as having obtained their jobs through “preference points” to make up for past discrimination against minorities) are the most despised of all workers by the general American society.  (Certainly America has plenty of dedicated, competent government workers.  However, the negative viewpoint of government workers dominates in American society.)

The minimum-wage public who votes as Republican are now convinced that the remedy to America’s economic woes is to cut back the government itself.  This involves cutting the the positions of most government workers, their services (sometimes without realizing the true cost of those services until they are gone), and the social programs that they feel others lazily take advantage of, while they themselves are out working hard for every penny, yet receiving no assistance.

As Petras points out, it is competition (not solidarity) between minimum-wage Americans, and the “near extinction of private-sector unionism” which is driving their behavior.

So, how do Republicans plan to cut back on the government, from this point forward?  By defunding it, of course, through additional tax cuts.

–Lynne Diligent

Middle Eastern Children Explain a CULTURAL Reason Why Moderate Muslims are Not Denouncing Extremists

Living in the Middle East, I often get asked the question, “If all Muslims are not extremists, then why aren’t the so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims not publicly denouncing the extremists (or their behavior, and/or their interpretation of Islam)?”

A chance comment to me by a Middle Eastern student made a very important reason clear to me, which I have never seen discussed anywhere.  The reason is CULTURAL.

Middle Eastern and North African societies  are cultures where people are divided into in-groups and out-groups.  This is a completely opposite type of thinking from what we have in the United States and some other western countries.

I had an interesting conversation about this with some 11-12-year-old students I know.  We were discussing some bullying problems that have been going on in their North African classroom, when one student asked me, “Mrs. Diligent, why do our American teachers at our school think we should help people (other students) who aren’t our friends, when our parents teach us not to?”  Having lived in the Middle East for 18 years, I understood immediately what they were talking about, as well as the confusion and frustration of their American teachers.

When I first moved to the Middle East with my Middle Eastern husband, one evening I was out walking with my husband through a tight area of the old city, and a line of parked cars were outside of a restaurant.  Someone had parked their car and left the lights on.  A man was standing there, who appeared to me to possibly be the parking lot attendant.  As we were passing right next to him, I asked something like, “Excuse me, this car has its lights left on, do you know where the owner is?”

My husband immediately got upset with me and asked, “Why are you asking about this?  It’s not your business!”

I replied that perhaps the person would come out of the restaurant to find their battery dead, and that if the owner could not be found, perhaps we should just open the car door and switch off the lights for the person (we were in a very small city, with an atmosphere of a very big town).

Again, my husband said something like, “It’s NOT your BUSINESS!  We don’t get involved in other people’s business like that!”  (or similar words, recalling the conversation 18 years later).   My husband then actually apologized to the the parking lot attendant for my having “disturbed” him, and told me to be quiet as we walked away.

My husband is NOT a jerk, by the way…so you can imagine my shock and surprise at this incident.  This is just how the American teachers are feeling about the way some of the students are treating others at school.  It is also just how many Americans are feeling when Muslim terrorists commit atrocities and the so-called “moderate” Muslims are not speaking up by publicly denouncing their behavior!   Thus, many Americans are WRONGLY concluding that the “moderate” Muslims actually are secret extremists, and condone those people’s behavior.

So, what is the explanation here?  The explanation is that most of these Muslims were raised in “in-group” cultures.

In an “in-group” culture, children are taught to normally offer help ONLY to other members of their in-group (your family or very special friends).  (So, woe to a person in the Middle East–foreigner or country national–who doesn’t have a large family in-group to “help” them every time they have a problem!)

Some students told me that if someone witnessed a person being harrassed by others in the street, the correct response would be to ignore them and not get involved.  Children are told, “That’s their business, it’s none of our business.  Stay out of it!”  (The logic is that in “in-group” societies, one is neither obligated nor expected to help others.  Why?  Because those people have their own in-groups to help them.)

So, if students witness another student being bullied on the playground or in line, their usual reaction is to ignore what is going on, rather than to offer help, unless one of the participants is their own friend–in which case they enter the conflict on the side of their FRIEND, rather than necessarily on the side of the person who is being bullied.)  This is the behavior which many American teachers have tried to fight, usually unsuccessfully, because the whole culture is like this.

This same idea contributes directly to international intercultural misunderstandings.   The subject often comes up when discussing Israel and Palestine, and America’s support of Israel.

I find many people in the Middle East absolutely convinced that the United States is a Jewish country.  When I ask what percentage of America they think is Jewish, I usually get an answer of between 50-80%.  When I inform them that the actual percentage is around 2% (actually the 2010 figures say it is only 1.4%, while the Muslim percentage in 2010 was about 1%) I get absolute disbelief.  Sometimes after discussing it for about fifteen minutes, I make a little headway in making them doubt their former opinion.  But in ALL cases, the response is, “If they aren’t Jewish, why would they help Israel so much?”  They usually reply that he only reason they can see for providing such aid to others would be the selfish reason of helping one’s own blood relatives;  thus the assumption that most people in America are Jewish!

Now we turn to the question of why moderate Muslims are not standing up and publicly denouncing terrorists.  Most of these people are either living in countries that are in-group societies, or have moved to the United States from such countries, and were brought up with such values.  Therefore, when someone does something really bad, they might declare privately to people who are friends, “That’s terrible!  That person calls himself a Muslim, but he most definitely not acting like a Muslim, or in accordance with Muslim values!” (This is what is meant when moderate Muslims comment, “That person is not a Muslim.”)

When people are brought up to STAY OUT of any conflicts, and not even to help their neighbors or classmates who have problems, and are even DISCOURAGED from doing so, is it any wonder that as adults they continue to behave in accordance with those values?  It does not mean that they agree with that behavior or condone it in any way.  It is more like they want to keep their head down and avoid trouble.

One reason for this is that reprisals can be very severe in their own cultures for either speaking up or getting involved (in some cases such as a person might just disappear and never be heard from again).  So yes, they are afraid of reprisals, but this is not the whole story.  It’s the idea that , “You are only responsible to people in your own in-group.”  That in-group (unlike in the West) does NOT include either strangers, or the whole society.

Lastly, this doesn’t mean that no one ever helps others.  They do.  However, this help is rare compared to the number of people in the West who offer such help to others.   In the West, we don’t have in-groups, and every individual is considered to be equally responsible to all others in the society–such as to enforce no-smoking sections; to speak up if people butt ahead in line; to help someone who is having a problem in the street; or to speak up publicly against behavior which is to be condemned by society.

–Lynne Diligent