Company languages

It was quite common in the 1980s for German and French companies entering the international market to incorporate the use of their language of origin in the internationalisation process alongside English and the languages of the countries where they established themselves. In the study mentioned above France Telecom states that it used to use French together with Spanish for its contacts with Latin America. Another case known is that of Rhône Poulenc (chemicals, pharmaceutical) before its merger with Hoechst to form Aventis in 1999.

This company willingly admitted at the time that it was actively involved in the dissemination of French. Foreign executives of the firm in Italy, Germany, Spain and even in the United States (in its Rorer subsidiary) said they were accustomed to express themselves in French. It reported at the same time that it made substantial use of English, in France as well, but there is no study on the respective shares of the two languages in the company's operations. At the beginning of the 1990s its training policy included a dozen languages.

Siemens AG, with its head office in Munich, was known until the end of the 1990s for allocating an important role to German. Relations between head office and branches and among the latter were conducted partly in that language together with English, which was used in certain sectors. It had the reputation of being demanding as regards the knowledge of German possessed by the non-German-speakers whom it recruited and whom it trained in its language school, the Siemens Sprachenschule in Munich, or in the countries where its branches were established.