Insights & guides
A German colleague sends an English email that reads, to an English-speaking recipient, as blunt. Not rude, exactly, just unusually direct. No softening, no “I was wondering if,” no “when you get a chance.” Just the point, stated plainly, and then the email ends.
The recipient reads tone. The writer meant clarity. Neither is wrong. Something structural is happening underneath the words, and it is worth understanding, because it explains a great deal of what gets misread as brusqueness in cross-cultural business communication.
German has a grammatical rule that shapes far more than sentence structure. In a main clause, the verb almost always sits in second position, no matter what comes before it. “Ich gehe heute zur Schule” and “Heute gehe ich zur Schule” both keep the verb, “gehe,” locked in place, even though the sentence starts differently each time.
In subordinate clauses, the rule flips entirely: the verb moves to the very end. “Ich weiß, dass du heute zur Schule gehst” translates, word for word, as “I know, that you today to school go.” The listener has to hold the whole clause in mind and wait for the verb to arrive before the meaning fully resolves.
This is not a minor grammatical quirk. It trains a speaker to plan a sentence's full structure before starting it, and to deliver information in a tightly ordered sequence rather than layering it in loosely as the thought develops. English tolerates far more meandering. German, by its own grammar, does not.
When a German speaker moves into English, the sentence-planning habit often comes along with them, even though English's grammar no longer requires it. The result is language that is highly structured, sequenced, and to the point, exactly the instincts that make German itself clear and precise, applied to a language that expects more cushioning around the same information.
English speakers frequently read that directness as coldness or abruptness. It rarely is. It is closer to a grammar showing through a second language, the structural habit of stating the point plainly, without the softening scaffolding English speakers are used to hearing.
It is worth being precise about what this actually is. It is not that German speakers are blunt, and it is not that English speakers are vague. Each language has developed its own conventions for how much softening a straightforward request needs, and those conventions do not map onto each other automatically just because the vocabulary does.
This cuts both ways. An English speaker's habitual softening, “I was just wondering if maybe,” “when you get a chance, no rush,” can read to a German colleague as unclear or even evasive, as if the speaker does not actually know what they want. Neither culture is doing it wrong. Each is applying its own language's norms to a shared conversation, and the mismatch is what creates the friction, not either party's individual choices.
For a German professional presenting or writing in English to an international audience, the goal is not to abandon the clarity and structure that German grammar has already built into their thinking. That precision is an asset. The goal is to add a layer of English-style softening on top of it, deliberately, in the moments where English convention expects it, particularly in requests, feedback, and anything that could otherwise read as an order rather than an ask.
This is not about becoming less direct. It is about knowing which register a given moment calls for, and choosing consciously between German-style plainness and English-style cushioning, rather than defaulting unconsciously to whichever one your first language trained into you.
The reverse is equally true for English speakers working with German colleagues or clients. What reads as courteous softening in English can read as unclear or non-committal in German, where a direct answer is often expected and valued as a form of respect for the other person's time. Adjusting toward more directness in that context is not rudeness. It is matching the register the room actually runs on.
Because the structure your first language gave you was never a flaw to fix. It is a starting point worth understanding, so you can choose, deliberately, when to use it and when to soften it.
Concepts referenced: German verb-position grammar (verb-second and verb-final word order) and its influence on cross-linguistic communication style, as discussed in comparative linguistics research.
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