From Insecurity to Impact: The Power of Embracing Language Diversity

I have a confession to make.

In my first years of working in Australia, I felt like a fraud.

I was employed in the Communications area, based in the Brisbane office of a large Brazilian company. After working for 6 years at IBM in Brazil and completing a Masters in Journalism in Australia, my English was good enough back then, but in my opinion, not quite good enough. My accent was still thick and undoubtedly foreign.

I discovered that I was earning significantly less money than my peers in my team. "It must be because I'm not good enough," I thought.

Secretly, I used to pay a freelancer from my own pocket to review my writing before sending it out. Most of the time, she would return with only very minor adjustments, but to me, it implied that my work was inadequate. I had always been extremely proud of my writing when I was in Brazil, but suddenly, I felt incompetent.

A few comments and well-intended corrections of my English here and there only further undermined my self-confidence.

I often remained silent in meetings because I feared that all people would notice about me was my accent and my English mistakes.

My once-strong voice was gone.

The turning point came during a global communications conference in Rio when a Canadian colleague bluntly asked me, "Vera, why were you hired to work in Communications in Australia?" My mind went blank. All I could think was, "I have no idea, I hope they don't discover what a fraud I am."

Years passed, but these feelings lingered.

I convinced myself that because I couldn't speak the language “properly”, I wasn't good enough.

Over time, I started to meet more people like me — talented individuals who felt ashamed and embarrassed because of their accents and English "mistakes". As my English proficiency improved and my confidence grew, I realised what a waste it was. These incredible, diverse individuals had so much to offer but remained silent. Like I once did.

And, from the outside, it didn’t make any sense to me. I could understand them perfectly. Yes, they had accents, and yes, they didn't speak like native speakers, but who cared? Certainly not me. I was proud of them for having the courage to speak up and having their ideas heard – after all, their ideas were beautiful, and their diverse backgrounds brought new perspectives and ways of thinking. That's what truly mattered. Substance over form.

I began to emerge from the shadows and step into the light.

I started sharing more of my thoughts and opinions, and I began to make a difference. I realised that my background and my language skills in Portuguese and Spanish were like different lenses through which I viewed the world. I didn't just have the English lenses like most native speakers — I had more.

In her fascinating TED Talk, cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky discusses how languages shape the way we think and pay attention to different things, depending on what our language requires. This is why learning more languages is so beneficial. It not only improves communication but also opens our minds to different ways of thinking. One language alone cannot achieve that. But by speaking another language, we gain access to countless different perspectives.

English is direct, while both Portuguese and Spanish are descriptive. You don’t just say something: you describe it. Reading romances in their original Spanish or Portuguese versions is truly beautiful. Even my voice changes when I speak another language compared to English. My brain shifts, and my personality changes. My worldview and life are so much richer because of it.

However, with English being the dominant "lingua franca" today and the emphasis on perfect grammar, coupled with biases against accents (Heather Hensen does some great work about this), we risk being confined to a narrow, "perfect" view of the world. But let's not forget — out of 2.4 billion English speakers, only 400 million are native speakers. That means 2 billion people speak English as a second language — an astounding 83% of English speakers! By succumbing to our insecurities and limiting what we have to say because of form rather than substance, we empower those who were simply fortunate to speak a particular language from birth which luckily for them became the dominant language of today’s global world. Nowadays I’m not quite sure it’s a sign of luck as most miss the great opportunity and richness that learning a new language brings to our lives.

However, it was tough. Life was never easy for those who learned English later in life – our journey required immense effort, study, mistakes, shame, misunderstandings, trial, and error. And now I see this journey made us stronger, more resilient, and more empathetic.

As Lera says in her talk: "And the even worse news is that right now, almost everything we know about the human mind and human brain is based on studies of usually American English-speaking undergraduates at universities. That excludes almost all humans. Right? So what we know about the human mind is actually incredibly narrow and biased, and our science has to do better."

I sincerely hope that no one has to endure the dark times I once experienced. That people speak and be proud of their accent and even their English mistakes as they have so much to contribute!

My journey taught me that our differences make us stronger. I now realise that I never had less - I had more. As I overcame self-doubt, I see how speaking multiple languages is a gift. We need to celebrate our diversity and encourage everyone to share their unique perspectives. By doing so, we can create a more inclusive, diverse, and truly enriching world.

Visit my website

#culture #diversity #inclusion #english #interculturalcompletence #communication #learning