One thing I have noticed repeatedly when working with Spanish-speaking professionals is that their professional knowledge is often considerably more advanced than the English they are able to produce in real time.
This can be difficult to recognise because, from the outside, it may simply look like an English mistake.
For example, I have heard professionals say, “I don’t have problems to establish…” when what they want to say is perfectly clear. The more natural English construction would be “I don’t have problems establishing…”.
The difference is small, and the meaning is usually not difficult to understand. But it can reveal something interesting about what is happening when a professional is speaking English.
The idea is already there
The person who says “I don’t have problems to establish…” usually does not have a problem with the professional idea. They know what they want to say. They understand the situation, the process and the implications of what they are discussing.
They are not trying to invent a professional concept in English.
They are trying to express something they already understand.
The difficulty is that, while thinking about the professional situation, they also have to construct the English sentence in real time. Sometimes the construction that comes out is based on a perfectly logical way of assembling the language, but it is not the construction an experienced English speaker would normally use.
This is one reason why professional English can sometimes sound heavier than the person’s actual thinking.
The English makes the thinking harder to hear
There are many small examples of this.
A professional may say “this matter we need to talk about” instead of “this is a matter we need to talk about”. They may say “what about to begin?” instead of “how about beginning?”
In each case, the intended meaning is usually quite clear.
These are not failures of professional communication in the sense that the listener cannot understand the business issue. They are signs that the speaker is assembling the English while also trying to manage the professional conversation.
And that distinction matters.
If we treat every such problem simply as evidence that the person’s English is poor, we can easily misunderstand what is actually happening.
Knowing English and accessing English are not the same thing
A professional may have enough vocabulary, enough grammatical knowledge and enough experience with English to understand a situation and know what they want to communicate, but still not have the most natural construction immediately available when they need it.
That is a different problem from not knowing the language.
It also suggests a different way of thinking about improvement.
The question is not always, “What new English do I need to learn?”
Sometimes the more useful question is:
“What do I already know, but cannot yet access easily enough when I am speaking?”
I find this distinction particularly important when working with experienced professionals because their professional competence is often not the limiting factor. They are already making complex decisions, explaining processes, challenging ideas and discussing consequences in their own professional environment.
The challenge is doing some of that work in another language, while the conversation is already moving.
The gap can be smaller than it feels
This is also why I am careful about how I interpret these mistakes.
A sentence such as “I don’t have problems to establish…” may look like a small grammar problem, and technically it is. But the more interesting observation is what sits behind it.
The person already has the thought.
They already have the professional intention.
They may already have most of the language they need.
What is missing is not necessarily more knowledge. It may be the ability to bring the appropriate English construction into the conversation quickly and naturally enough.
That changes the meaning of the mistake.
It becomes less a question of whether the person “knows English” and more a question of how easily their existing English is available when they need to use it.
And for professionals whose thinking is already complex, that difference can matter quite a lot.
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