When we move more to the right of the table we see that internationalisation of the capital has a moderate effect on Spanish, which reaches 57.3% of the linguistic behaviour, even though it continues increasing compared to previous type, that is, companies with Spanish capital. The most evident effects of the internationalisation of capital are related to the significant reduction of Catalan (26.3%) and the high increase of English (to 11.1%). In these companies, then, the data indicate that the aggregate use of Catalan only doubles the use of English.

This type of companies with international capital are where the concept of trilingualism best describes the linguistic practices. English in companies with foreign capital is especially present for more symbolic reasons, such as the name of the company or the signs. But on highly instrumental environments such as training (18.1%), publications (14.1%) or the work environment based on new information and communication technologies (19.9%), they show a noticeable reduction of Catalan in favour of English. In this latter indicator, English is above Catalan (14%).

Table 6 . Distribution of the behaviour linguistic according to origin of the capital

Source: developed from the data of the survey on linguistic practices in small and medium companies in Catalonia.

4.3. International distribution of customers

There are practically no linguistic differences between companies who only have customers in Catalonia and companies with customers in Catalonia and the rest of Spain. Nevertheless, if we concentrate on the different grouping of indicators, there are significant differences in the working language. In companies with their market throughout Spain, when we refer to the working language for meetings or for relationships with customers and suppliers, there is a high perception of the use of Catalan, even above those companies who only have customers in Catalonia.

The most significant differences regarding linguistic practices are observed in the different ways of internationalisation of companies located in Catalonia. The companies where a greater aggregate use of Catalan is observed are those who only have customers in Catalonia and in the rest of the world (without customers in the rest of Spain). In these companies the use of Catalan reaches 76.4% to only 18.9% of Spanish.

In those companies, associated with de-localised services for large international companies, which indicate not having customers in Catalonia, the use of Catalan (19.6%) is below that of English (21.6%). This is an interesting case since the perspective of the international organisation of the job which takes advantage of new technologies and the relatively low cost of staff in Catalonia to offer knowledge intensive services to production centres in other countries (Solé et al., 2005)

With abovementioned exception, the use of Catalan is not prejudiced by the internationalisation of the markets of the companies' customers and, on the other hand, the use of Spanish is reduced when the companies have customers in the rest of the world.

Table 7. Distribution of linguistic behaviour according to the international
distribution of customers

Source: developed from the data of the survey on linguistic practices in small and medium companies in Catalonia.