Your Other Language Skills

Your language skills matter more than ever. But I don't mean English, French, Spanish or Swahili. I mean industries. Sectors. Scenes.

And I don't mean skills, either - not verb conjugation or grammar.

I mean the rhythm, the jargon, the gossip, the acronyms.
The customs. The trade. The way it works. The way it doesn't.
The sub-cultures, sub-genres, sub-specialities. The sub-sub-sub of all of them.

"Conversational."
"I can order a beer."
"I'm C1."
"I get by."

At a high level you might have "Advertising", "Music Industry" or "Tech Startups". This is where most platforms stop - LinkedIn, Upwork, whatever.

Then there's "Creative Directors", "Festivals" or "Product Management".

Go further and you're into niche ad tech, Japanese indie rock venues, or Notion nomenclature.

Have you ever thought about which industries you speak?

Scribble them down. You might surprise yourself.

The thing is, you don't learn these from a course. You learn them by doing - being in the room, making mistakes, picking up the rhythm

I'm not sure I have a native language anymore. Instead, I'm Proficient, Fluent, Conversational - in different things. A growing number of us will be like this.

Here are some of mine:

• Music Industry - proficient, yet references expired around 2015.
• Advertising - conversational when caffeinated.
• Learning & Development - fluent, small country though.
• Finance - enough vocabulary to nod (off) convincingly.

What are yours?