Your first week in an English-speaking office is a vocabulary ambush. Nobody warns you that "let's touch base" has nothing to do with baseball, or that your manager's "when you get a chance" means "today, please." Here is a survival kit of the phrases you will hear before your first Friday.
The meeting classics
- Touch base — have a quick chat. "Let's touch base after lunch" is an appointment, not a suggestion.
- Circle back — return to a topic later. Sometimes sincere; sometimes a polite way to park an idea forever.
- Take this offline — discuss it outside the meeting. Usually said when two people are boring the other eight.
- On the same page — in agreement. "Just making sure we're on the same page" often precedes discovering you are not.
The time-and-workload set
- ASAP — as soon as possible. In Malaysian offices, frequently pronounced as a word: "ay-sap".
- Bandwidth — capacity to take on work. "I don't have the bandwidth this week" is the professional version of "please, no."
- EOD / COB — end of day, close of business. Clarify which time zone before you relax.
- Deliverable — the thing you actually owe. If it appears in an email, screenshot it.
The start-up imports
Words like start-up itself, scale ("can this scale?"), pivot (change direction) and runway (how long the money lasts) have escaped tech companies and now roam free through every KL office tower. You do not need to use them — but you need to know what they mean when the CEO does.
A note on tone
Office English is more indirect than textbook English. "I'm not sure that's quite right" usually means "that's wrong." "Interesting idea" can mean almost anything. Our Business English course spends a full module on this subtext, because vocabulary without tone is only half the language.