What People Don’t Expect When They Start Working in Another Language (C1 English Reading)
When people start working in another language, they usually expect practical challenges: vocabulary gaps, grammar mistakes, or maybe feeling less confident in meetings. What they don’t expect is something more subtle. Over time, many professionals notice that using another language doesn’t just change how they speak. It changes how they show up. I’ve seen this from several angles. Teaching English to professionals has given me a close-up view of how this shift happens. At the same time, I’ve experienced it myself. First with English, which I’ve used since childhood and which became my second operating system and more recently while developing another one in Italian. At the beginning, most people try to sound exactly like themselves, just in another language. They aim to preserve the same complexity and control they have in their native tongue. That approach works, but only up to a point. As people start using a foreign language regularly at work, especially in real situations with...