Why Latin America Beats Asia in English Fluency for Remote Teams | Nearshore Cafe Podcast

Brian: Welcome to the Nearshore Cafe podcast, home to the most interesting stories and people doing business in Latin America. Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast, where we talk about business leaders and doing business in Latin America. I’m your host, Brian Sampson, an entrepreneur who’s spent the last eight years focused on Latin America. And before we get rolling today, we’ll just give thanks to our sponsor, and that is Plug Technologies, P.L.U.G.G. dot Tech. Plug is a great way to find talent, especially software engineering talent, all over Latin America for U.S. companies.

If you’re a regular listener, you know that we often have guests, but occasionally we’ll do a solo show. As I mentioned, I have eight years in this region, and just a lot of personal stories and anecdotes. Today, I want to talk about English fluency: speaking English, writing English, what that looks like, what that feels like. That was one of the major drivers for me back in 2015, to start to land and expand, starting in Argentina but then making my way across the rest of Latin America. I’ve just found that fluency is at a completely different level. And just to make a statement like that, you need some comparisons; you need a way to contrast. So, I want to talk about my own travels all across the globe. I haven’t been everywhere. I’ve never been to Africa, I haven’t been to Antarctica, but I’ve spent time in Europe, spent a lot of time in Asia, and of course, Latin America.

So, let’s start with Asia. Outsourcing has existed with Asia for many, many years, and I think there are really three core countries that we think about when we do outsourcing to Asia: India, of course; China; and the Philippines. Now, of course, there are secondary countries that are really making jumps: Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore. Singapore, you know, is tiny but packs a punch. Then you’ve got some more developed countries as well. But when I have traveled to all those countries—Cambodia as well, Indonesia—there’s certainly some English, but there’s really what I call “tourism English.” Okay, so “tourism English” means you interact with a guide, you check into your hotel. English is great, right? Because they’re speaking English all the time. It’s just that’s what you need to do to get those tourism jobs; you level up, and it’s great. But you get beyond the tourism sector, and that English fluency drops dramatically. And you also look at working with non-tourism sectors—I’m talking IT, customer service—same thing. That English proficiency drops dramatically.

Now, let’s talk about those Tier 1 countries that I mentioned at the beginning for Asia Outsourcing: China, India, and the Philippines. China is different in that everyone there speaks Chinese—various dialects—but they do teach English. Now, if you’ve ever conversed with somebody in English while in China, there’s a heavy accent. And actually, a lot of the English is based on British English, so it doesn’t feel quite natural. And also, that accent, that accent makes it a little hard. Let’s take a look at India again. India has—although English is widely used—a lot of proficiency. It’s not the type of English you might use in the U.S. It’s a little scripted; it’s not as easy to follow, easy to understand. They’ll use different phrases and different words. So, it doesn’t feel like a natural conversation; you definitely know when you’re talking to someone from India. And again, these are not negative call-outs. I’ve traveled to China, I’ve traveled to India; I’ve had wonderful experiences, enjoyed the culture, the food. Today, we’re just talking about work English fluency, English fluency in the workplace.

And then there’s the Philippines, a country I have a lot of exposure to. Even my in-laws are from the Philippines. And customer service is a huge industry—customer service, BPO operations-type stuff—a huge industry in the Philippines. If you’ve ever called United Airlines or any other major company, chances are your call is being directed to somebody in the Philippines. And English is a dominant language there; people speak English all the time. It’s a primary reason why companies outsource to the Philippines. But very similar to what I’ve said, you know right away when you are on the phone and you’re connected to somebody in the Philippines. Their accent, the scripted English, the formality of it—it sticks out. You just know right away. And there is this scripted part that I really want to dive into: you feel like they are not having a natural conversation with you. It’s kind of based off a call center script. So, you can understand them; the English is fine, but it’s not how you might talk to your friend or colleague in the States.

Europe, of course, people are polyglots with language. I remember traveling to France one time, and the stopover was in Switzerland, and the immigration person knew like five or six languages. And I think that’s kind of normal. But Europe, especially Western Europe, is developed. That means you’re not really outsourcing to Western Europe because the costs are almost identical; it doesn’t make sense. So, you’re looking for arbitrage, and that’s where Latin America, I think, really stands out. That’s where it’s got a competitive advantage.

I’ll start with Argentina, but I’ll talk about some other countries too. With Argentina, you can just tell right away that their “tourism English” is fine. You know, you check into hotels, you go to Mendoza, you go on wine tours—of course, right? Same as all these other countries I mentioned. But what’s different is the workplace English: it’s unscripted, it’s casual. And I think a lot of this has to do with the cultural connection to the States. So, number one, they’re watching the same Netflix shows that we are, and they’re watching it in English. They’re watching it with American, U.S.-style English. They’re using our idioms and our phrases. You tell somebody in Argentina to “take a hike,” okay, they know to back off. They’re not grabbing their backpack and getting ready to go hike in the hills. They understand all these things; they understand a lot of these kind of funny phrases, and just ways that we describe things, our adjectives. They use the same style of English, and that matters big time.

I wanted to hit on this workplace English as well because when you are talking to somebody from Latin America that has this level of English—because that’s the way that they’re taught, and a lot of that has to do with survival too—they are exporting a lot of services to the States. So, that means that software developers, marketing, operations, customer service, call center—they’re selling a lot to the States. And they know to stay ahead of the game, their English has to sound and be written like someone in the States. In my personal experience, that’s exactly what it is. The spelling is exactly right. The grammar is just as good as anybody that I communicate with in the States. The jokes, the humor—it lands. Like, people get it.

This is very anecdotal, but I also want to share some reports that I’ve seen. So, this is something called the English Proficiency Index. It’s put out by an international language training company called EF. In the case of Latin America, there’s a score, you know, zero to seven hundred. As I called out, Argentina was number one in Latin America on the list; it scored 562 out of 700. That’s quite high in the world, ranked 30th. But of course, this is going against countries like Canada and the U.S. And it was actually the only country in Latin America that reached this high-level classification. But very closely behind are countries like Costa Rica, which have very similar—tourism is very high in Costa Rica, but there’s also a lot of employment that interacts with the U.S. There’s also Colombia, Cuba; they’re right behind, again, a lot of interaction with the U.S., both the workplace and tourism. And also, to call out Colombia: Colombia is the most neutral accent, according to EF. So, that means when they’re learning English—remember, Spanish is their first language—but when they’re learning English, they’re learning it with almost no accent. Just like if you’re in the States, where are all the call centers? They’re in Utah. Why? Because Utah is really a neutral accent. It’s not a Boston accent, or New York, or a Southern accent, or Texas cowboy-style, California Valley Girl. Utah’s accent neutral, just like Colombia. You know, it’s accent neutral.

Ironically, Mexico scored a little bit lower on English. But there are certainly major pockets—Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Mexico City—where English is widely spoken because there’s so much business in the U.S., and fluency is so easy. A couple of other countries that stood out: Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Uruguay. And if you know anything about Southern Latin America, namely Uruguay and Argentina, it’s very European. You have large Italian influence, Spanish influence, even some German influence. It’s very European, and again, Europeans are polyglots. They’re very used to learning a wide variety of languages, switching off back and forth quite easily. So, I think with that European influence, the more neutral accents, it’s easier to understand the connections: the U.S. culture, music, politics, movies, TV shows, jokes, idioms. It all comes together. So, it’s not like you go to your hotel and then you’ve got to speak Spanish for the rest of your trip. You’ll be surprised how widely spoken it is, and it’s not just in the tourism sectors. And it’s why, funny enough, I’ll leave the pod with this last line: People ask me all the time how my Spanish is. They know that I work in Latin America; I’ve been doing business with Latin America for the last eight years, with a variety of companies. This is my focus. My Spanish, funny enough, has probably gotten worse in the last eight years, not better. It’s gotten worse! Why? Because I can speak English with such ease with my team and anybody else that I interact with: hiring, interviews, sales, workplace, whatever—accountants, lawyers. The English is so abundant, it’s so easy, it’s so free, it’s so natural. Sounds just like I’m talking to somebody in Texas or Nebraska. It’s almost incredible to me, but I’ve gotten so used to it. But I wanted to put this out because it’s probably one of the biggest questions I get asked all the time: “Is English fluency like the Philippines?” It’s unscripted, it’s easy. It’s easy English, just like we’re talking to each other, just like we’re talking to our friends. Always around if you want to talk about English and Latin America. But keep checking out our podcast, and you’ll also hear from a lot of English-speaking people from Latin America, and you can hear for yourself. Until next time, this is the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I’m Brian Sampson, and today’s podcast was sponsored by Plug Technologies, Plugg.tech. Great way to find software developers all across Latin America. Thanks for listening.

Thank you. Thanks for joining us at the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Tune in next week for a new episode featuring another special guest with exciting stories.