Read on Twitter
What it means having to work in foreign language: fear, time loss, lost opportunities. A 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧵" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread">triggered by a (kind of warranted) "please write in better English" in a recent referee report & one of my group member& #39;s lament on how their English writing sounds like robot writing. 1/2
It means constant fear: of saying something wrong or inappropriate. Of not understanding something, especially a question. Of knowing what you want to say, how you want to answer a question, but not being able to say it in the foreign language. 2/3
It means losing your first language: you look at essays you wrote in high school & know you are not able to express yourself the same way again. Your sentence structure changes. You use the wrong words, the wrong voice, idioms from the foreign language without even realizing. 3/4
It means having your competence and your intelligence constantly questioned: OMG, his talks are the worst! It may be interesting science, but I can& #39;t understand him because of the accent! I can& #39;t read her papers, they are just incomprehensible. 4/5
It means spending time you don& #39;t have: looking up words, making sure to follow obscure grammar rules, thay you don& #39;t sound off (short sentences and active voice make you sound like a kindergartener in German; passive voice and complex sentence are to be avoided in English). 5/6
It means knowing how to spell words you read, but having no idea how to pronounce them. Or having heard a word and being unable to look it up because you don& #39;t know how it& #39;s written. 6/7
It means using outdated rules that offend people ("Dear Sirs", "Fräulein"). It means trying to write in German and people piling on you because you don& #39;t do the gendering right (yes, * or : please, but how is a non-native speaker to know?). 7/8
It means lost outreach and engagement opportunities: media interviews that go to native speakers with clear pronunciation. Articles you are not asked to write. You are not funny enough, not witty enough, not expressing yourself clear enough, fast enough. 8/9
Some of the above we could solve with compassion and understanding. Others (the mental load, the time loss) are inherent and may get better with time and age (and thus with influence and less need to rely on opportunities), but never fully goes away ... 9/9
And there we go, me seeing tons of English mistakes in the thread once it is posted https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🤦‍♀️" title="Frau schlägt sich die Hand vors Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Frau schlägt sich die Hand vors Gesicht">
