Category: Worker Guide · Slug: workplace-language-basics-first-month-abroad
Drafting note: no sourced figures and no legal claim in this piece — the brief's conditions do not apply to B3.
Intro
Most overseas workers arrive able to say hello and thank you. That is not the gap. The gap is the fifteen or twenty words that appear in a supervisor's sentence at 7am on a factory floor, when there is no time to look anything up and getting it wrong has a consequence.
This is not a language course. It is the short list that changes your first month — organised by what you actually need, not by grammar.
Why these words and not more
You will learn hundreds of words in your first year simply by being there. The first month is different: it is when instructions are given quickly, when you are still new enough that people explain less, and when a misunderstanding is most likely to be read as an attitude problem rather than a language one. Twenty well-chosen words used confidently are worth more than two hundred used hesitantly.
1. Safety words — learn these first, before anything else
These are the ones where not understanding has a physical consequence. Learn them in your first week, and practise saying them out loud, not just recognising them.
- Stop / wait — the two most common safety words in any language.
- Careful / danger / hazard.
- Hot / sharp / heavy.
- Watch your hands / watch your head.
- I don't understand — say this early, not after the third repetition.
- Slowly, please.
- Help. Rule: the phrase "I don't understand" is a safety tool, not an admission. Every experienced worker on that site uses it. The workers who get hurt are more often the ones who nodded.
2. Instruction words — what you are being asked to do
- Come / go / bring / take.
- Here / there.
- Now / later / today / tomorrow.
- More / less / enough / again.
- Finished / not finished.
- Start / stop.
- This one / that one / the other one — pointing is not enough when your hands are full.
- First … then … — the two-word version of a sequence.
3. Time and numbers — the ones that appear on every shift
- Numbers 1–20, then 30, 40, 50, 100. You will hear numbers constantly: pieces, boxes, minutes, pallets.
- Hour, half hour, minute.
- Morning / afternoon / night.
- Break / lunch.
- Overtime.
- Today / tomorrow / yesterday.
- Monday to Sunday. Time and number words earn their place because a misheard number is invisible. A misheard word is noticed; a misheard number usually is not.
4. People and place — who to talk to and where to go
- Boss / supervisor / manager.
- Team / group.
- Washroom / toilet / break room.
- Entrance / exit.
- Doctor / pharmacy / hospital.
- Police / embassy / consulate — you may never need these words, and you should be able to say them anyway.
5. Pocket phrases that buy you time without losing face
- "Again, please."
- "Slower, please."
- "I understand" / "I don't understand."
- "Can you show me?" — the single most useful sentence in the first month.
- "Is this correct?"
- "Thank you" / "Excuse me" / "Sorry." "Can you show me?" solves more problems than any vocabulary list, because it converts a language problem into a physical one.
6. How to actually learn them in two weeks
- Learn the safety words out loud first. On their own. Before travel.
- Write your own ten beside them. The words you will need depend on your sector — a warehouse, a hotel kitchen and a field are different workplaces.
- Use a translate app for single words, not for sentences. Sentence translation produces confident text that nobody says.
- Ask a colleague to correct your pronunciation once. People are generally glad to, and it is the fastest correction you will ever get.
- Say the word even when you are not sure. A mispronounced attempt is treated far better than silence, in every workplace we have seen.
7. What not to do
- Do not nod to be polite. This is the single most common and most costly habit.
- Do not rely on another worker to translate indefinitely. They will not always be beside you, and relying on them keeps you dependent.
- Do not assume the words you already know mean the same thing. False friends exist in every pair of languages, including the ones closest to each other.
8. The short version
- Safety words first, out loud, before you travel.
- Numbers and time words next — a misheard number is invisible.
- "I don't understand" and "Can you show me?" are the two sentences that carry the whole first month.
- Twenty words used confidently beat two hundred used hesitantly.
Compliance check (B3): no figures, no legal claim, no guarantee ✔ · no banned terms ✔ · no licence number ✔ · no fee ✔.
WHAT I AM NOT DOING
- Not publishing, not scheduling, not sending. These are drafts for review.
- I did not invent a rate for any country I could not source, and the table says so in the cells rather than hiding it. If the team would rather fill those cells, the figures should come from the official sources named in §2 of B1.
- B2 asserts no statutory entitlement in any country, because I did not source one for each. If we want a per-country "what the employer is legally obliged to provide" table, that needs a sourced legal review per country — I would treat it as a separate, sourced piece rather than fold it in here.