Working in English When English Isn't Your First Language

This was a letter written by Nico, an engineer at Ellii, who moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, from Argentina to work on the Product Team at Ellii. Nico sent this letter to Team Ellii before he stepped away from his desk last weekend. Nico works on making things work behind the scenes from developing new features, to smashing bugs, to wrestling with Ellii Bot. When you download the new app for students this coming fall, you can thank Nico!

Dear Team Ellii,

Working at Ellii not only means working in an English environment, but also, as you all know, working for a company that publishes English materials specifically for ESL learners! 😱

I have always felt welcome and understood; not once have I had a coworker mention a grammar mistake or wrong pronunciation, and no one interrupts me to correct me unless I'm asking for help. You are the best team ever! And believe me, I know my accent can be a challenge sometimes! 😂

One of the perks of working with all of you is that I'm constantly learning English without actually trying to learn English. This last week was one of the most prolific vocabulary wise, I learned 4 new words from 4 different people in random conversations.

Each time I see a new word, something gets triggered in my mind; I can quickly catch its meaning by context, but you know what, the first reaction is thinking there was a typo or an autocorrect mistake, because your brain can always try to go to the known place, where things are not scary.

Here are those new words:

plummeting: hey, did they try to type plumber? I know that word! But nope; this is a new one, and means "to fall or drop straight down at a very high speed, or to decrease suddenly and steeply."

sleuthing: when I read it in my mind, it sounded like slithering. I know that one from Harry Potter 🧙‍♂️, but no, this one means: "searching for clues, gathering evidence, or tracking down information." 🕵🏻‍♂️

conundrum: I don't know why, but my brain went to tantrum, not quite the same; this one means "a confusing and difficult problem." 😵‍💫

onus: this one sounded Latin, like some kind of legal jargon maybe, and I was right with the Latin etymology and used in legal contexts as "onus of proof"; this word means "burden, responsibility, or duty."

I'm sure in a couple of weeks I'm going to forget that new vocabulary, and I'm not going to use it anytime soon, but a teacher once taught me to try to write it in a sentence; it will stick, so here we go:

Now the conundrum is how to stop my confidence from plummeting every time I have to do some sleuthing, but I guess the onus is on me to figure out what the heck everyone is talking about. 😁

Okay, that was harder than I thought. See you in two weeks when I have forgotten all four of them.

And seriously, thank you all for making working in a second language feel so easy and comfortable. You probably don't realize it, but I'm learning from all of you all the time. ❤️