What is the point of learning another language if people in other countries speak English?
July 14, 2010 - 7:55 am
I’m thinking of learning to speak Mandarin, but from a business perspective I’ve herad business people in China usually know English. I’m just not sure of the justification for spending so much time to learn a lanugage when in reality you probably won’t be fluent anyway. I know President Obama and a lot of major businessmen don’t speak anything other than English.
Learning a language is a good mental exercice. It teaches you humility (something Americans are often short of). But most of all, it opens your mind to another world.
July 14th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
English is the lingua franca now, but wait ten years. It will be slowly being phased out in favor of simplified Chinese.
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July 14th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Yeah, if most business people speak English it does seem pointless. But learning a new language is fun (or at least I think so), teaches you more about the culture you may be interacting with, and certainly makes you look much smarter and more respectful to the other culture.
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July 14th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
They might like you better for taking time to learn their language. Not everybody everywhere speaks English. You learn about culture as well when you learn another language.
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July 14th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
I don’t know. Former President Bush’s use of Spanish helped him with the Latin American population.
Learning language is vital to being able to understand another culture, because so many cultural ideas are closely related to the language. If you are not interested in learning this sort of thing, and you will not spend a lot of time overseas, then you are probably right – you don’t need to learn.
Also, you probably won’t be able to even order fast food in China, Korea, Japan, etc. without some ability in the language.
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July 14th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
because a lot of people in other countries do not speak english (just in case they do not) and that way if you plan on living in other countries it would be much easier than hoping the people you talk to can speak enlish
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July 14th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Learning a language is a good mental exercice. It teaches you humility (something Americans are often short of). But most of all, it opens your mind to another world.
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July 14th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
OK – I write something personal. I’m French, I’ve lived in Spain for 4 years now and I live in an area where there are many English people. Some of these people even if they are here since 7 years, cannot and don’t want sometimes to learn Spanish because they think that Spanish people have to learn English ! As it is the international language.. (they also think that Spanish people should do fish and chips in restaurants and other things) Spanish people I know and myself, think that it’s not the good way of beeing : I think we have to respect other cultures ( language and behaviours) and that’s a minimum when you’re in contact with other people. If you respect them, they respect you, even if you do mistakes when you speak a foreign language, they try to help you. The point of learning is beeing able to respect, understand, communicate with other people..
If you want to be in touch with foreign people, the minimum should be that you try to adapt yourself to their culture, not the inverse.
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I’m FRench
July 14th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
I am very firm-set in my belief that English will continue to expand its global hegemony over the next century, but nevertheless knowledge of a foreign language is a very valuable thing.
Not only does it help you to better understand another culture, but it will also help you to understand how the English language works. You learned your first language naturally, through imitating your parents and the people around you– you didn’t sit down and ponder the mysteries of the double past participle or passive voice, and you’ve probably never heard the term "split ergative" in your life. Learning another language will give you access to valuable information as to how languages in general work, not just, for example, Mandarin or Spanish.
I also know from experience that people greatly appreciate it if you take the time to learn (or even try to learn) about their language or culture. You’ll find that most people (except maybe the urban French and Swiss Germans) will be absolutely elated if you even try to wheeze out two sentences in their native tongue. Mandarin might not be an essential skill for business– but being bilingual is largely necessary to understand the shrinking world around you.
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July 14th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
You are right. Nowadays, English is the de facto international language. As travel guru Rick Steves once said "When a Norwegian and a Greek meet in Switzerland, the language they use to communicate in is English." Likewise, one American I knew who worked in Iran said that when a Japanese businessman gets together with an Iranian businessman to negotiate a contract, the language they use is English.
Therefore, learning a language other than English may be good for your own education, edification and enjoyment. However, it is not an essential tool necessary to conduct business in a foreign country.
Prior to World War II, French had been an important language for diplomacy, and German an important language for anyone majoring in engineering or the sciences. Yet, today, English has supplanted French and German even in these areas.
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July 14th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
I lived in China for almost a years and the vast majority didn’t speak English.
Learning different languages is fun and exercises your sanity.
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July 14th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
It would still be an advantage if you can understand everything they say, instead of just the parts they bother to say in english.
but if you’re ok with looking like another lazy american to them, then don’t bother learning it, you can probably get by…
…..most of the time.
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July 14th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Have you heard about OFFSHORE ENGLISH?
Offshore English is a term being used by many people for International English. It is the English spoken and written by non-native speakers in international communication. Many in business are starting to worry that native speakers are actually at a disadvantage in international communication. One case study that is quoted is of a contact to provide flight simulators to South Korea, where a French company won the contract because the buyers found it easier to understand the English spoken by the French that the English spoken by the British company.
Many native English speakers feel little need to learn foreign languages, so they often lack understanding of the difficulties and problems learners face. They also don’t see the need to modify their language for a foreign audience, so they use idioms, synonyms, colloquialisms, phrasal verbs, etc, without thinking of the impact this might have on a foreign businessperson.
The English studied by non-native speakers tends to use a narrower core vocabulary, and given the similarities in courses in many parts of the world, often accentuated by the success of a relatively small number of course books, such as the Headway series, and the domination of a few examinations, IELTS, TOEFL, the UCLES suite, etc. This means that non-native speakers from different countries and cultures may understand each other more easily than they do the native speaker. Few native speakers outside the world of ESL teaching have much idea of what non-native learners are taught, and think that as their English is native speaker level, they speak it better than their non-native counterparts. This unawareness is starting to cause problems that businesses are beginning to identify, and courses in Offshore English are now being offered to native speakers in an attempt to train them to speak the kind of English that will make it easier for non-native speakers to understand, enabling them to win more contracts.
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