Global Policy Forum

By John Tagliabue

Ludovic Timbal learned English at school and used it occasionally while studying law in Paris.

But that never prepared him for the avalanche of English he encountered after he joined a Paris law firm last year. "I want to be a business lawyer, and I realized you just cannot avoid speaking English," Mr. Timbal, 29, said in vaguely accented English. So now Mr. Timbal attends a Paris language school and spends up to four hours several days a week drilling English conversation — "an investment in the future," he called it.

As European banks and corporations burst national boundaries and go global, many are making English the official corporate language. Two years ago, when France, Germany and Spain merged their aerospace industries into one company, they not only gave it an English name — the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, or EADS — they also made English its language.

In Germany, the national postal service, Deutsche Post World Net, increasingly uses English as its working language. Smaller companies are doing likewise. In Finland, the elevator maker Kone adopted English in the 1970's; in Italy, Merloni Elettrodomestici, a midsize home appliance maker, did so in the mid-1990's. Management meetings at big banks like Deutsche Bank in Germany and Credit Suisse in Switzerland are routinely in English.

In part, the triumphal march of English through European business is symbolic, born of a wish to shed a parochial image and assume that of global player. To this extent, the adoption of one language in business is probably not an indication that Europeans are abandoning their cultural identities as they have surrendered their economic nationalism and adopted a single currency.

But there are also substantive reasons to use English, which makes it easier to leverage international links and enable far-flung affiliates to communicate both with headquarters and among themselves. Behind this choice lies a reality that unsettles some Europeans: the use of English is mainly determined by the unchallenged dominance of the United States in industry, commerce and finance.

"It is the key market in the world as a consumer; it is the center of financial markets," said Subramanian Rangan, associate professor of strategy at the Insead business school outside Paris, whose language of teaching and research is English. "So with regard to products, financing, knowledge and technology, the United States has risen to unparalleled pre-eminence in these last years, and it doesn't seem there are contenders to change that."

In Toulouse, in the south of France, English has been the official language at the aircraft manufacturer Airbus since its founding more than 30 years ago as a loose consortium of aerospace companies from France, Germany, Britain and Spain. Partly, Airbus executives say, this was because of a bad experience on an earlier project, building the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic jet: Concorde's French chief engineer, despite fluent English, refused memos from his British counterpart unless they were in French.

But the choice also reflected American predominance in civil aviation. "Our documentation was often based on American manuals," said Barbara Kracht, the Airbus spokeswoman. "And it was complicated — you know, there's Boeing slang, G.E. slang, Pratt & Whitney slang."

In executive meetings, if a majority speak French, German or Spanish, then the majority tongue is spoken; the minutes are in English. On the factory floor, local languages prevail.

In Italy, the appliance maker Merloni adopted English in the 1990's. Merloni was a family-controlled, midsize player with a name few had heard of, competing against renowned giants like Electrolux of Sweden and Bosch-Siemens of Germany. Its chief executive at that time, Francesco Caio, believed that English would give Merloni an international image.

The company's subsequent growth cemented the role of English. In 2000, Merloni acquired Stinol, Russia's biggest refrigerator maker, and last December, Britain's Hotpoint, adding 6,000 Britons and 7,000 Russians to the work force. At both Hotpoint and Stinol, English is the language of management.

"I can't give percentages, but now many executives are not Italian — French, English, Danish, Russian and so on," said Andrea Prandi, Merloni's spokesman. "We consider ourselves a European group. For Europe, the official language is English." Whether the use of English enables everyone to penetrate intangible cultural issues, and to communicate as closely as, say, the French have among themselves for centuries, is much less clear.

Professor Rangan of Insead suspects that the corporate use of English represents "only shallow integration."

"I doubt it's in the board room, and it's not on the factory floor," he said. "So it's a narrow sliver. It's not in labor relations, and it's not in customer relations."

But it does provide a communication tool, "much the way we use mathematics and numbers," he said. Jussi Itavuori, a Finn who is group vice president for human resources at EADS, agrees. "It's neither English nor American," he said. "It's some sort of operating language. It loses quite a lot of nuance." Indeed, some would argue that English at work drives Europeans back to their native tongues.

Christine Rahard, a Frenchwoman in her 30's, manages corporate communications for the French automaker Renault, working extensively in English. But in her home village west of Paris, friends and neighbors who increasingly feel the intrusion of English into their working lives share a kind of mild backlash, reaffirming their French roots in food and drink, everyday customs — and language.

"At the market place on a Saturday morning," she said, "you find people using old words for vegetables that everyone thought died out decades ago." The spread of English, of course, is a gold mine for language schools. Five years ago, Wall Street Institute, where Mr. Timbal studies, had only three schools in France. Today, there are 38, 8 in Paris alone.

"It reflects the world we live in," said Jeremy Newman, director of Mr. Timbal's school. Similarly pervasive is the practice of naming English speakers to top jobs at European companies.

When Myron Ullman, the American executive best known in the 1990's for saving the Macy's department store chain, was hired to be chief executive of the big French-based luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moí«t Hennessy Louis Vuitton, he knew his inability to speak French would not be a problem. Years earlier, the LVMH chairman, Bernard Arnault, had made English the group's official language.

Still, the chatter in the cafeteria and around the coffee machine remains in the local tongue, so not having it is recognized as a drawback.

For the time being, European banks and corporations appear set to remain linguistic hybrids, using English as their lingua franca, yet relying on local languages in telling ways. Such an arrangement appears to work against anyone who does not speak the local language.

"It's a definite disadvantage," said Horst Neller, a partner in Düsseldorf, Germany, for the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. "In the local language, you open your heart."

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