Insights & guides
You are on a call with a colleague. Mid-sentence, without noticing, you switch languages. “Ne, das geht nicht, I am working at 12.” No, that will not work, I am working at 12.
Nobody in the conversation blinks. It is not a mistake, and it is not a sign that your English or your German is weak. It is one of the most ordinary things a bilingual speaker does, and it happens for reasons worth understanding, especially if your work depends on being taken seriously in a second language.
Linguists distinguish between a few related but different behaviours, and each one shows up constantly in international business communication.
Code-switching is changing from one language to another depending on who you are speaking to or what the situation calls for. A student might say to a lecturer, “I disagree with that interpretation because the evidence suggests otherwise,” and say to a close friend an hour later, “Nah, that explanation was not it.” Same person, same underlying idea, two entirely different registers, chosen to fit the room.
In business, this happens constantly. A German executive might run a technical discussion with colleagues in German, then shift entirely into English the moment an international client joins the call. That is not indecision. It is a deliberate, skilled response to who is in the room.
Code-mixing is different. It is using elements of two languages within the same sentence, not switching between them but blending them. “Ne, das geht nicht, I am working at 12” is a clean example: the sentence opens in German and finishes in English, in one continuous thought.
This is not broken language. It follows patterns, and it shows real comfort operating in both languages at once. Bilingual speakers do this naturally, often without noticing, and it should not be read as a gap in ability. If anything, it is a sign of fluency flexible enough to reach for whichever word arrives first, in whichever language it belongs to.
Convergence is subtler still. It is what happens when two speakers, over the course of a conversation, start to sound more like each other, adjusting pace, phrasing, and style to communicate more effectively. Two colleagues in a meeting might each begin more differently than they end, drifting toward a shared way of speaking simply because it makes the exchange smoother.
This is happening in almost every client meeting, negotiation, or presentation you have ever given, whether you noticed it or not. The question worth asking is not whether you are converging toward your audience's style, you almost certainly are, but whether you are converging toward the right one.
None of this is really about grammar. It is about what your audience concludes from how you move between registers and languages, often before they have consciously registered anything at all.
A professional who code-switches fluidly between technical German and client-facing English is not confused. They are managing two audiences well. A presenter whose English converges toward the formality of the boardroom they are standing in is not losing their voice, they are reading the room correctly.
The risk is not in switching, mixing, or converging. The risk is doing it without intention, drifting into a casual register in a formal moment, or staying rigidly formal when warmth would land better. The skill is not eliminating this behaviour. It is directing it.
If you already move between languages or registers depending on who you are speaking to, that is not a weakness to correct. It is a genuine skill, and one most monolingual speakers never have to develop at all.
The work is in making it deliberate. Knowing, before you walk into a room, which register the moment calls for, and choosing it on purpose rather than drifting into whichever one feels most natural in that instant.
Because the way you move between languages was never the problem. The question is only ever whether it is working for you.
Concepts referenced: code-switching, code-mixing, and linguistic convergence, as discussed in sociolinguistic research on bilingual speech.
Communication Audit
Many professionals receive feedback on their technical performance, but very few receive feedback on how they communicate under pressure.
The Communication Audit is a personalised assessment designed to identify the communication habits that strengthen, or unintentionally weaken, your executive presence. Together we evaluate areas such as persuasive communication, executive language, presentation structure, confidence, cross-cultural communication and overall credibility, and you receive practical recommendations to help you communicate with greater influence.
About the Communication Audit15–30 minutes. English or German. Online worldwide.
Short answers to what most people want to know before booking.
Each engagement has a starting price, agreed with you before any work begins.
What moves the price is how much work happens outside the live sessions. Every engagement can also be booked in a lighter form, which costs less.
Rehearsal only. We use the call to practise material you have already written. No document review, research or written feedback beforehand.
Sessions only. For the Intensive and the Partnership, we work live in the sessions, without document review or preparation between them.
The full versions include the work I do between sessions: reviewing your draft, researching your audience, refining the structure, and written feedback. We agree the exact price in the free consultation, once I know what you actually need.
That depends on which engagement, and most of all on how much time there is before the moment you are preparing for.
Communication Audit. A week before your deadline is ideal. That leaves comfortable time to review your material, send the report, and rehearse before you deliver it.
Presentation Intensive. Two to three weeks works best, so the sessions can be spaced out properly rather than compressed at the last minute.
Communication Partnership. This one is ongoing, month to month. Most of the value builds over several months rather than in a single cycle.
If your timing is tighter than this, do get in touch anyway. It is often still possible.
Most people are more ready for this than they think.
You will get the most from the work if you can already hold a conversation in English, because we focus on how you use the language rather than teaching it from the beginning.
If your English is solid but not yet fluent, the Communication Partnership is often the best fit. It gives us time to build business vocabulary alongside structure, delivery and confidence, rather than preparing for a single event.
If you are not sure where you stand, the free consultation will make that clear very quickly, and you are most welcome to book one.
Not quite, though the two are easily confused.
I do not teach English from the ground up. Instead, we work on how you use the English you already have when it counts: how a presentation is structured, how a recommendation is made, which words carry authority, and how you handle the questions that follow.
You bring the expertise and the language. My work is making sure both of them land.
Online, over Google Meet. You will receive the link with your booking confirmation, and there is nothing to install.
Yes, and it is a good way to start. If your material is already written and you would simply like to practise delivering it, you can book the session time on its own.
There is no document review, research or written feedback beforehand, so it costs less than a full Audit or Intensive.
For a larger team, or for something more structured than a rehearsal, tell me what you are preparing for and I will come back with a price.
Yes, very happily. If a team is presenting together, or several colleagues are preparing for the same kind of moment, the rehearsal can be run as a group.
It works best with a small group, so that everyone gets real feedback rather than simply a turn to speak. It also tends to work best within one team, since you will be watching each other rehearse.
For a larger team, or for something more structured than a rehearsal, do tell me what you are preparing for and I will come back with a price.
Yes. The booking calendar shows my availability in your time zone as well as mine, so there is never confusion about when we are meeting.
My clients work across Europe, the Americas and beyond, so times outside standard European hours can usually be arranged.
A relaxed conversation of 15 to 30 minutes over Google Meet. It is not a test, and there is no need to prepare perfect English.
The call is there so I can understand what you are working on, rather than to begin the work itself, so we will not be doing any coaching or preparation in it.
I will ask a little about your role, your goals and the challenge in front of you. Towards the end I explain how I could help and answer anything you would like to ask, including about price.
There is no obligation to book afterwards, and the call is free either way. If you would like to get more out of it, there is a short guide on how to prepare.
Not at all. The consultation is simply there if you would like to talk things through before committing, and most people find it useful.
If you already know what you need, you are very welcome to book directly:
Please do say so, and as early as feels right. It is genuinely useful to know.
In most cases it means we are focusing on the wrong thing, and that is mine to put right rather than yours. A change of approach is usually all it takes.
If it still is not working after that, I would far rather tell you honestly than carry on regardless. The Partnership runs month to month with no lock-in, so you are free to stop at the end of any month.
Of course, and many clients are funded by their employer.
I invoice you, and you pass the invoice on to your company. It names the engagement only, so what we actually work on stays between the two of us.
Completely. Nothing you share with me is passed on to anyone else.
Your documents are never shared with anyone else. Protecting your material is central to this work rather than an afterthought.
Very little, because very little is collected. This website has no analytics, no cookies and no tracking of any kind, so reading it leaves no trace with me at all.
What I hold is what you send me: your booking details, our correspondence, and the materials we work on together. None of it is sold or shared for marketing.
The full detail, including how long I keep things and how to ask me to delete them, is in the privacy notice.
The free consultation can be in German or English, whichever feels more comfortable for you.
The coaching itself takes place in English, since English is where you need to perform. If something is easier to explain in German, we switch for a moment and then carry on.
Life happens, and moving a session is never a problem. A message as early as you can manage is all I need.
To move a session to another time in the same week, four hours’ notice is plenty. To cancel, or to move it beyond the current week, twelve hours’ notice.
Inside those windows I do have to charge for the session, simply because the time has already been set aside for you. If something unavoidable comes up, please do just talk to me.
Question not answered here? Email me at nadia@noreva-communications.com