How language got a CEO fired

Many Intriguers will have experienced stumbling through a sentence, botching the word order, conjugating a weird ending, picking the wrong declension, then bringing it all home by accidentally switching to the informal register. And that’s just in English!

In many parts, simply giving the local lingo a try earns instant brownie points, and there’s now science to back up your pleas that you’re much better after a few beers: turns out a crisp ale can stop you over-thinking those plural tenses, resulting in more natural speech.

Anyway, it’s been a big week for language nerds, starting with…

1. The business of language 

Following a fatal Air Canada collision in New York, CEO Michael Rousseau released a condolences video in English, with only “bonjour”, “merci”, and subtitles in French.

And that didn’t go down well in Canada’s francophone heartland of Quebec. Why? It’s home to a) Air Canada’s HQ, b) one of the deceased pilots, and c) a long separatist history fuelled by any sense of disrespect from Canada’s broader English-speaking majority.

Rousseau followed up with a written apology in French and English, lamenting that even with 300+ hours of lessons not to mention a killer surname like Rousseau, he still struggles with Français. But it was too little, too late.

Quebec’s legislature passed a ~unanimous motion demanding his head, and others across the country — including PM Carney himself — piled on. Often in English, btw.

The lessons? First, while this might all seem quirky to outsiders, it’s a prime example of the real corporate risks around language: much like firms celebrating ‘lunar’ (not Chinese) new year, the costs can be real even if the offense feels optional.

But second, language here is clearly just a proxy for identity: it’s not about the bonjour but the signal it sends to the 20% of Canadians who are francophone: we see you.

And yet third, that respect clearly comes with costs: faults notwithstanding, Rousseau was a solid CEO who steered Canada’s flag carrier through Covid to new records. And yet — with aviation now in a Hormuz panic — this airline will now presumably prioritise whether his replacement knows the difference between mur, mûre, mûr, and murmure. Investors are unlikely to cheer.

That leads us to…

2. Language and power

As our world gets more synthetic, digital, and globalised, there’s a natural premium on tradition, culture, and identity. And that presents politicians with threats and opportunities.

Here’s an example. Moscow’s half-century of occupying its Baltic neighbours involved forcing locals to learn Russian, plus settling ~1.7 million ethnic Russians there.

Fast-forward, and Putin has now used the pretext of defending Russian speakers to attack and occupy ex-Soviet states like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. And that puts others like the Baltics in a bind. Do you…

• a) keep spending taxpayer funds to teach kids a language Putin might use to invade you (again), or

• b) quietly de-emphasise that language, but risk just handing Putin his exact invasion pretext in the process?

Since Putin went all-in on Ukraine, NATO members Estonia, Latvia, and (tbc) Lithuania are all now variously opting for b, quietly phasing Russian out of schools, while withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention so they can start lining their Russian border with landmines.

Maybe life just seems a lot simpler with a…

3. Lingua Franca 

Not so fast. With spooked economies everywhere pulling up the drawbridge, and hedging via new trade mega-deals, the EU’s trade chief recently floated the idea of speeding up the process by circulating new deals in English only, then leaving the 23 other official translations until after ratification — each day of delay literally costs EU folks millions.

But in Brussels, the mere posing of such an idea was like farting in church: capitals quickly wafted it away, offended by any notion that the bloc should breach its own basic guardrails around tradition, identity, and respect just to earn a few more euros.

Yet even without official backing, examples of English-language dominance in Europe keep surprising us: a bombshell leaked call between the foreign ministers of Hungary and Russia featured the two dunking on the West in… English!

And even within English-dominant societies, our Kiwi friends are now debating the fact Te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language are both official languages, yet English is not. The US just capped a similar debate by anointing English alone at the federal level.

Elsewhere, the tension goes deeper: take China, which just used its latest Two Sessions to mandate Mandarin education, very much at the expense of China’s various minority languages with freedom-seeking histories, like Tibetan and Uyghur. 

Anyway, whether it’s a CEO losing his job over ‘bonjour’, Baltic kids ditching Russian, or Beijing stamping out minority tongues, language is emerging as our next battleground.