back to article Ireland's international tech sector bumps up against language barrier

Ireland has a very good track record of using its corporation tax rate to attract foreign tech firms - anyone who is anyone is either in Ireland or has been here. The number of jobs created down the years has been significant, especially for such a small country. The Industrial Development Agency (IDA) boasts that Ireland’s “ …

  1. Mage Silver badge
    Alien

    Languages

    All the people I met in MS Dublin "localisation" were from rest of Europe. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese people.

    "Native" Irish are rubbish at languages, on average, there are brilliant people. Despite Irish in every primary and secondary school, less than 10% have any Irish fluency, likely outnumbered by Chinese speakers. Loads of Polish, but only by people from Poland!

    Even for jobs only needing English in High Tech Dublin, there are loads of French, South Africans, Germans, Polish, Ukrainians etc. There are not enough local people with suitable qualifications. Also people from elsewhere don't realise how expensive Dublin is till they have the job and it's too late!

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: Languages

      Localization work, like technical writing, tends to require people who are native speakers, though. There's a big difference between being able to attend meetings and visit/present to customers in another language, and being capable of writing perfect grammatical documentation in it.

      1. WatAWorld

        Re: Languages

        That is true. Even professionally translated documents, when they are for mass distribution need to be reviewed by an educated native speaker last.

        There is simply no way you are going to teach someone who is not a native speaker to have educated native speaker fluency -- especially when that someone is not a linguistic specialist.

        1. MacroRodent

          Re: Languages

          There is simply no way you are going to teach someone who is not a native speaker to have educated native speaker fluency

          I disagree, at least partially. Some people have phenomenal talent for picking up a foreign language. I once met an American exchange student that had been in Finland for a year, but his Finnish was almost flawless (which I say as a native Finn). Even less-talented people can master a foreign language if they really try and put years of work into it. Easier if you start early. The hardest past will be perfecting your pronuciation (probably impossible if you start as an adult), but that does not matter for task involving writing.

          1. werdsmith Silver badge

            Re: Languages

            I would also add that I meet plenty of second language English speakers who speak idiomatic English perfectly, and have a far better technical grasp of English written grammar than a very large number of native English speakers. In Scandinavia, English is almost not a second language anymore. The Dutch, Germans are also very good, and the Poles increasingly so.

            1. Triggerfish

              Re: Languages

              I've noticed with foreign friend their grammar is often better I think it's because they are taught it as a second language and so are more formal. A couple of Dutch friends used to come over for the summer they spoke multiple languages fluently (one training to be a translator), and their langauge teacher used to bemon the fact they lost the Queens English and started being all Cockney in how they spoke, slang, phrasing etc. Have noticed it when trying to learn other languages as well, there's the language you are taught, then there is the language spoken like the natives.

      2. Rich 11

        Re: Languages

        and being capable of writing perfect grammatical documentation in it.

        Have you ever read any technical documentation which is grammatically perfect?

        1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: Languages

          Have you ever read any technical documentation which is grammatically perfect?

          My wife is a technical writer, I plead the 5th.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Languages

          Only time I came close was written by and Indian colleague based in Mumbai

          1. CRConrad

            And what?

            Irony, thy name is...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Languages

      I'm with Mage on this one.

      This week I'm teaching a training class for a major US (obviously) tech company and many of the students are based in Dublin. None of them are Irish, they are from the rest of Europe, they are based in Ireland and they server their home market place, from Ireland.

      Why Dublin? Well I'm sure the tax situation helps, but the same company has tried this before and failed because they've tried the wrong locations.

      Dublin is a fun place for young bright people.

      Twenty years back they tried to build a similar team in Brussels, because the manager for the project was from Brussels. Lots of people in the company warned him that he'd never recruit young bright keen engineers to work in Brussels, because A) it was too expensive and mostly because B) who'd want to go to Brussels.

      It was only when the feedback from the interviews started saying things like... "The interview was going great, the candidate was just the sort of person we need to recruit.... then I mentioned being based in Brussels and the candidate lost interest." and they found they couldn't get staff or retain staff they'd bribed to go there and in the end they gave up.

      The team based in Dublin doesn't have that problem, it seems lots of young engineers are more than happy to go and live there.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Languages

        then I mentioned being based in Brussels and the candidate lost interest." and they found they couldn't get staff or retain staff they'd bribed to go there and in the end they gave up.

        Not a new problem. 35 years ago BT were recruiting software engineers. They ended up opening centres in Newcastle, Belfast and London, because they found great engineers - who wouldn't move to Ipswich.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It starts in the schools...

    My kids have no option but to learn Irish at national school and will continue to do throughout secondary school. You can only get an exemption if circumstances allow (moved from abroad or ironically if English is actually a 2nd language...) or their learning ability is affected.

    It's effectively a 'dead' language they are never going to use in Ireland, let alone 'internationally'. Sure embrace your culture. Learn about your past but don't waste those resources teaching a pointless language to kids who don't give a flying feck about it anyhow.

    1. Rol

      Re: It starts in the schools...

      Ah! The language barrier. As in, "You lack the qualification in our ancient tongue, and therefore cannot be considered for this senior post"

      Yep, seen that one pulled many a times in Wales.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: It starts in the schools...

        "You lack the qualification in our ancient tongue, and therefore cannot be considered for this senior post"

        I've had that one in Ireland. There were two candidates for a post in an Irish university. I had several years research experience in the topic. The successful candidate had experience of an honours project and Irish. OTOH my kids avoided compulsory Irish in school.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It starts in the schools...

        The idea of a second language is to aid communication when your first language does not help. Finding someone who speaks Irish or Welsh who does not speak English is quite a challenge, unless you are a Welsh speaker in Patagonia.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: It starts in the schools...

      Given an interest in ancient Irish history - well, pre-history to be exact - I can sympathise with the aspiration to preserve an ancient tradition. Not that I had much sympathy with preserving an ancient language when we had compulsory Latin at school.

      But language exists to enable communication and I always had the impression that the political drive for Irish language teaching was closer to restriction of communication. Maybe it's now come back to bite them.

  3. AMBxx Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Is it the tax?

    Are they getting prepared for when/if international taxation of companies is sorted out? wIthout the beneficial tax rules, there's not much reason for anyone to site in Ireland.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Is it the tax?

      there's not much reason for anyone to site in Ireland.

      I can think of a few; apart from it being a brilliant place to live by the time the corporation tax is levelled out Ireland will have an established infrastructure and the right skill among its populous.

      And Americans like Frank Meyer Jr, Billy J. Ramirez and Robert J Copranelli get all sentimental about their Irish family roots.

  4. WatAWorld

    The Americans would never fall for such a lame excuse

    The Americans would never fall for such a lame excuse for hiring foreigners. They'd realize the real reason for not hiring locals is salary and overtime -- locals expect both, whereas migrants you can cheat.

    "A report in the Irish Times said business lobby groups in Ireland believed thousands of job vacancies could not be filled with Irish graduates “because of their chronic lack of German and other languages”."

    1. Mage Silver badge

      Re: Other languages

      C#, C, C++, PHP, Java, javascript, coldfusion, actionscript, ASP, SQL, php, ruby etc.

      I totally agree actually that you need native speakers for localisation. The only thing Native Irish speakers of German, Chinese, French etc would be useful for is translation of foreign documents into English.

      Due to USA dominance in software and Internet global companies, and the "English" nature of programming languages, the "foreign" person with English as a good second language is at an advantage over UK, Irish or English speaking Americans.

  5. XSV1

    Ek wonder...

    Ek wonder hoeveel Ierse mens Mandaryn kan praat?

    1. Chuunen Baka

      Re: Ek wonder...

      Oor soveel as Afrikaans kan praat.

    2. CRConrad

      Re: Ek wonder...

      Oder wie viele Schwedisch können, hur många som kan finska, ja montako puhuvat Kreikkaa?

      Eucharisto and merhaba everybody, and Feliz Dondurma! ;-)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ireland & languages....

    When you travel the Eurozone especially where France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy interconnect, it can be humbling to see people routinely speak three or even four languages fluently. The 'Irish mafia' bludgeons the population to death with 'Irish' instead of letting them learn Spanish or Mandarin etc...

    1. John Hughes

      Re: Ireland & languages....

      When you travel the Eurozone...
      Uh, Ireland is in the Eurozone.

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Ireland & languages....

      "especially where France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy interconnect"

      Is that really surprising? Being able to speak three or four languages in such a region is both useful day-to-day and feasible to learn (given the opportunities for practice). In the UK and Ireland it is only useful if you have a job that requires it and you have to make the opportunities to learn. There's a similar situation in the US, except in the SW corner where (surprise!) there is rather more bilingualism.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Is that really surprising?"

        Our Nordic friends can speak many languages fluently too. So not buying that argument...

        If Ireland binned the Irish requirement there would be room to learn another more useful language...

        1. CRConrad

          It doesn't work that way.

          "there would be room to learn another more useful language"

          On the contrary, the more languages you already know, the more you can learn.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Uh, Ireland is in the Eurozone."

      Meant to say Schengen... Ireland is still CTA as its hooked into whatever the UK wants. (unless Brexit happens...)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    it strikes me that the main barrier to trade with Europe is language. If the EU's goal is a true single market, then it should surely standardise English as a first language in every country of the union.

    Alternative languages now are just sentimentality. It doesn't really matter if Italian kids are taught Italian in history classes, does it?

    1. MacroRodent

      @ disgustedoftunbridgewells

      You forgot the troll icon...

      Actually, what you propose may eventually happen without any conscious standardisation, provided the current economic and political relationships stay in force. Given the choice, European kids usually prefer to pick English as their first foreign language, and learn it at an absolutely frightening speed, thanks to video games and other popular "culture" (this based on first-hand observations of my kid and his pals).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @ disgustedoftunbridgewells

        I was trolling a bit ( and look at my creation! :) )

        But I'm partially serious. English is by far the most understood language around the world. If an Norwegian bloke bumps into a Thai bloke, they're more likely than not going to be speaking English.

        It seems very odd to me that in this globalised age, we aren't even trying to move toward formally addressing the main thing that stops people in different countries being able to communicate. English is by far and away the easiest answer.

    2. A K Stiles
      Coat

      re: it strikes me...

      erm... you appear to have forgotten the coat or joke icons?

      I totally agree that it would greatly help if we could standardise on a common language but nobody is going to agree to only teach and use English as a functional language across Europe. Attitudes are too entrenched to ever accept that.

      Perhaps however, we should agree across Europe on a specific, formal European language that everyone is taught at school as a second language, perhaps something with less grammatical peculiarities than any of the existing langauges, (and no diacritics / fine pronunciation issues etc.)

      How about High Valerian?

      1. Rich 11

        Re: re: it strikes me...

        How about High Valerian?

        Don't you mean High Valyrian? Valerian is a herb...

    3. Ken 16 Silver badge
      Trollface

      But once the UK leaves Europe, won't it make more sense to standardise on German?

      1. Swarthy

        Esperanto?

        1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

          Latin? It once was the lingua franca all over Europe...

          1. Rich 11

            Latin? It once was the lingua franca all over Europe...

            Ita vero.

            1. Peter Simpson 1

              Romani ite domum!

        2. Spanners Silver badge
          Meh

          Esperanto?

          Not a perfect idea.

          At least with German, English, French, Mandarin and so on there are a large number of people who speak it already. There are no native Esperanto speakers and more of us did Latin in school than that.

          1. Swarthy
            Trollface

            Re: Esperanto?

            Exactly! It's a real language; but as there are no native speakers, we will all be on the same playing field. If we were to standardize on English or German (or goodness forbid, French) the native speakers would have an unfair advantage over the rest of Europe/the world.

            Esperanto or Loglan would put everybody at the same level of disadvantage.

            1. Ole Juul

              Re: Esperanto?

              Esperanto was invented to solve the problem of quibbling over which national language to use. You get to keep your own national language at the same time as having an international language. Furthermore, because of the way it's structured, Esperanto allows a nice way to keep your native style and still be perfectly understood. For those with native western languages it is also the easiest to learn by a large margin. One reason Esperanto is easy is that it has a clear grammar (fits on two pages) with no exceptions, something which cannot be said of English.

              That said, now that our everyday and business world has grown to include the Eastern hemisphere, Esperanto is looking a bit old because it is based on Western language roots. For Europe it's still a good idea though. I'd also like to point out that the grammar of Esperanto allows all forms and so facilitates very clear as well as creative expression - suitable for both technical and poetic writing.

          2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
            Unhappy

            Re: Esperanto?

            "more of us did Latin in school than that."

            I'd describe it more as having Latin done to us. Despite several years of it my smidgeon of Latin is more botanical than classical.

      2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        "But once the UK leaves Europe, won't it make more sense to standardise on German?"

        If we leave, English will be the *least* controversial choice. Also, most of those who can't speak the language properly will have left, too, so the standard of spoken English in the EU would rise.

    4. Spanners Silver badge
      Alert

      @ disgustedoftunbridgewells

      The problem may be that the "English" they standardise on is not quite English.

      I'm not talking about, for example, a German using their own sentence construction. That just depends on their fluency. I'm sure my French grammar follows the rules of English at times. Fair enough..

      I find it slightly naff that a lot of people from Central Europe etc seem to have learned their English somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic!

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      it should surely standardise English as a first language in every country of the union

      Sore point in France at the moment. Not only is the official team song for Euro 2016 in English, so is the French entry for the Eurovision song contest. Nul points.

      1. John Hughes

        Not only is the official team song for Euro 2016 in English, so is the French entry for the Eurovision song contest.

        Well, the French entry (sung by an Israeli dentist) is actually in English and French.

        Bizarrely the Austrian entry is in French, too.

        Eurovision is great!

  8. werdsmith Silver badge

    My Latin (which is now almost completely obliti (oblitus?)) was all about grammatical construction, and all the words used to describe the grammar were English words, some of which I would never use in everyday life e.g. "declension". My son is now learning Latin at school, it's used in Academia history study so that the students and scholars can read those old texts directly and not through the mind of a translator.I suppose it gets used in the catholic church too. sic fiat.

    1. Toltec

      "all about grammatical construction"

      Going on recent news items about the testing of primary school children it appears English is being taught like that now. I don't remember having to identify anything much past verbs, adverbs and adjectives, it meant that French and German teachers used terms to teach us the structure of those languages that might of well have been a foreign language themselves.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "I don't remember having to identify anything much past verbs, adverbs and adjectives"

        I had a line manager like that once. I had to bring in a copy of Fowler to show him that my using a gerund in a report was grammatically correct.

  9. Toltec

    Try and get the French to agree to it being anything other than French!

    I am not sure about other languages, however English is fairly dynamic and words or phrases from other languages are often adopted into regular usage, as well of course adding new ones. It would be easy to imagine an international language evolving from an English. In the way we already label variants as American or Australian there would be an International English, it would be a version not controlled by the English...

    1. Swarthy

      English would be the worst possible candidate. Being a creole language with rules that contradict each other, and exceptions to all of the rules (including this one), English is very difficult to learn. One word is derived from German and is pronounced <one way>; this other word is derived from French/Latin, and is spelled similarly/the same but is pronounced <completely different> and a third word, probably derived from Greek, is pronounced like the German word, but is spelled with no letters the same.

      E.G: "He wound the bandage 'round the wound." and this.

      1. James O'Shea

        English, is, in the word of H. Beam Piper, the result of Norman men-at-arms trying to chat up Saxon barmaids, and no more legitimate than any of the other results.

        Alternatively, as one James Nicholl put it, "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

        English not only robs other languages of vocabulary at gunpoint, it proceeds to twist that new vocabulary into shapes not thought of in the original language. American English is distinct from British English (which itself has at least five major subvariants and multiple minor ones) in part because of the large percentage of vocabulary it has liberated from Spanish and from various American Indian languages.Things are getting worse; American English also liberated words from the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam to mention but a few of the more recent additions. And, no, 'banzai' in American English does NOT mean what 'banzai' means in Japanese, just to mention one example. ('Tenno heika banzai' = 'may the most gracious supreme majesty reign 10,000 years', or, more simply, 'long live the Emperor') British English also liberated words from foreign lands, ranging from 'bint' to 'khaki' and they aren't quite what's meant in Arabic or Hindi, either. Canadian English substitutes French and different American Indian languages for the Spanish and others in American English, and, worse, substitutes _old-fashioned_ French as Quebecois, being intensely conservative, speak a version of French not heard in France for nearly 200 years. Seriously. Mexican Spanish is notably different from Spanish Spanish thanks to all the local American Indian words it has loaded in... and thanks to the American English filtering over the border. And, oh, there are at least four major subvariants of American English.

        I won't even go into Indian English or, God help us, Australian English (Jesus wept...) except to point out that as there are more speakers of Indian English than of any other variant, it's _they_ who speak the dominant version of English and they should be the ones in charge of creating International English. Which would have to be taught to pretty much everyone, including Indian English speakers, as a foreign language.

        1. bep

          Correction

          "I won't even go into Indian English or, God help us, Australian English (Jesus wept...)". Excuse me, old chap, that should read "Australian English (spare me days!)".

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        " One word is derived from German and is pronounced <one way>;" etc

        Prompted by a comment in another thread a few days ago I keep intending to see if it's possible to draw up a complete phonetic alphabet based on words where the first letter is silent e.g. k as in knee.

  10. x 7

    most Irish already speak a foreign language: English

    1. James O'Shea

      And we're better at it than any bloody Anglo-Saxon illegal immigrant. Including the ones cluttering up a certain large building in London SW1A 1A. Germans out, Britain for the Britons!

  11. Andrew 99

    your call is important to us

    I expect the lack of 2nd language is around call center vancancies. Any written documentation would be send off to in-country translators. Offices in other countries communicate in english when the head office is also english.

    Another example of chicken-littlism.

  12. John Savard

    Not Surprising

    Any country where English is the primary language will be one where the people don't have as much motivation as schoolchildren to endure the drudgery of memorizing thousands of words in a foreign language. This is true in the United States, in English Canada, in Australia - and to a somewhat lesser extent in the UK, since it is at least closer to France than Ireland is.

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