快有所短,慢有所长：非母语人士在母语环境中的优势

快有所短，慢有所长：

非母语人士在母语环境中的优势

1. MORE and more of the world is working in English. Multinational companies (even those based in places such as Switzerland or Japan) are making it their corporate language. And international bodies like the European Union and the United Nations are doing an ever-greater share of business in the world’s new default lang uage. At the office, it’s English’s world, and every other language is just living in it.

▌英语日渐成为越来越多人的工作语言。许多跨国公司（即使是总部位于瑞士和日本的公司）开始把工作语言定为英语。欧盟、联合国和其它国际组织也开始使用英语处理越来越多的事务，把它看成新的默认语言。办公室成了英语的世界，而其它语言只是混迹其中。

2. Is this to the English-speaker’s advantage? W orking in a foreign language is certainly hard. It is easier to argue fluently or to make a point subtly when not trying to call up rarely used vocabulary or construct sentences correctly. English-speakers can try to bulldoze opposing arguments through sheer verbiage, hold the floor to prevent anyone else from getting a word in or lighten the mood with a joke. All of these things are far harder in a foreign language. Non-natives have not one hand, but perhaps a bit of their brains, tied behind their backs. A recent column by Michael Skapinker in the Financial Times says that it’s important for native English-speakers to learn the skills of talking with non-natives successfully.

▌这对讲英语的人有利吗？毫无疑问，在非母语环境下工作十分困难。一个人在不用费尽心思回想生僻词汇或组织正确句子的情况下，他能够更流利地与别人争论，也更容易巧妙地表达观点。英语母语者可能会设法连篇累牍地强势推行自己的对立观点，并且口若悬河不让任何人有插话的机会，或者会试着搞搞笑来活跃一下气氛。而这些如果要用非母语来表达则异常困难。这对非母语人士而言（不过也许少数优秀者除外）并非是件轻而易举之事。近日，米歇尔·斯卡平克在《金融时报》中发表专栏文章称，对英语母语者来说，知道如何有效地与非母语者交流至关重要。

3. But, as Mr Skapinker notes, there are advantages to being a non-native, too. These are subtler—but far from trivial. Non-native speakers may not be able to show off their brilliance easily. It can be an advantage to have your cleverness highly rated, and this is the luck of verbally fluent people around the world. But it is quite often the other way round: it can be a boon to be thought a little dimmer than you really are, giving the element of surprise in a

negotiation. And, as an American professor in France tells Johnson, coming from another culture—not just another language—allows people to notice stumbling blocks and habits of thinking shared by the rest of the natives, and guide a meeting past them. Such heterodox thinking can be wrapped in a bit of disingenuous cluelessness: “I’m not sure how things work here, but I was thinking…”

▌但是，斯卡平克提到，非母语者也有优势，虽然这种优势更加难以察觉，但却不容忽视。非母语者也许不能轻易展现自己的才华。被认为聪慧过人的确有优势，这也是世界上许多讲话流利人士的幸运之处。但与此相反的情况也并非少见，那就是被人认为比你原本的样子愚笨一些也未尝不是件好事，因为这会在后续的谈话中给对方惊喜。就像一位在法国的美国教授告诉本文作者，来自另一种文化背景（而不仅仅是说另一种语言）的人能够注意到谈话中的障碍，以及其它母语者所共有的思维方式，从而引导着会议略过这些障碍。这种非常规的思维方式可以伪装成一知半解了无头绪，“我不清楚这里的套路，但是我认为…”

4. People working in a language not their own report other perks. Asking for a clarification can buy valuable time or be a useful distraction, says a Russian working at The Economist. Speaking slowly allows a non-native to choose just the right word—something most people don’t do when they are excited and emotional. There is a lot to be said for thinking faster than you can speak, rather than the other way round.

▌在非母语环境下工作的人还有其他的优势。“要求别人解释一下能为自己赢得宝贵的时间，或是成功转移注意力。”一名在《The Economist》杂志工作的俄罗斯籍员工说。语速慢给了非母语者时间挑选合适的词语，而这是大多数人在激动或情绪高涨时不会做的。“脑转得比嘴快”颇有其值得称道之处，而“嘴比脑子快”却乏善可陈。

5. Most intriguingly, there may be a feedback loop from speech back into thought. Ingenious researchers have found that sometimes decision-making in a foreign language is actually better. Researchers at the University of Chicago gave subjects a test with certain traps—easy-looking “right” answers that turned out to be wrong. Those taking it in a second language were more likely to avoid the trap and choose the right answer. Fluid thinking, in other words, has its down-side, and deliberateness an advantage. And one of the same researchers found that even in moral decision-making—such as whether it would be acceptable to kill someone with your own hands to save a larger number of lives—people thought in a more utilitarian, less emotional way when tested in a foreign language. An American working in Denmark says he insisted on having salary negotiations in Danish—asking for more in