jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6313 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin
| Message 17 of 39 17 September 2011 at 3:21pm | IP Logged |
nway wrote:
Try doing business in China without knowing Chinese.
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It depends on what you are trying to do.
Buying?
Selling?
Setting up a production facility?
Setting up research center?
etc.
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rivere123 Senior Member United States Joined 4849 days ago 129 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 18 of 39 01 October 2011 at 10:05pm | IP Logged |
While a lot of this depends on circumstance, Mandarin will be and is, to an extent, an indispensable asset if you are an important player in everything from oil to new technology.
Spanish will be useful (to an extent), but Brazilian will probably follow Chinese, to a much lesser extent.
You don't really need to know Arabic of any sort to work in the oil industry, even if you were in the center of Dubai.
Hindi has a lot of potential. German, for now, isn't a bad language to learn.
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versuss Pentaglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5393 days ago 20 posts - 25 votes Speaks: Taiwanese, Cantonese, Mandarin*, English, Malay Studies: French, Japanese, Esperanto
| Message 19 of 39 24 June 2012 at 7:11pm | IP Logged |
If it's about near future (which means the future when all of us in this forum will still
likely be alive) It's still English.
With English you can do business in the entire world.
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vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4791 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish
| Message 20 of 39 24 June 2012 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
nway wrote:
As someone already pointed out, English is more useful as a business language in South Asia than Hindi — not least of which because South India is experiencing greater economic success than the more agrarian North India. Indeed, Gujarat is India's most economically prosperous state, so if anything, it might even be Gujarati rather than Hindi (but I wouldn't count on either). |
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Technically Gujarat is in neither North nor South India, and from what I heard Gujaratis actually don't mind speaking Hindi as much as Tamils do. English is still the preferred language of business though.
nway wrote:
...a severely declining population (not because of low fertility rates, but because of high mortality rates). |
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They both contribute. The meme here in Russia is that we have a European fertility rate and an African mortality rate.
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Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4687 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali
| Message 21 of 39 25 June 2012 at 4:01pm | IP Logged |
In Europe, German is becoming the most important continental European language. The German economy is booming, and Angela Merkel is de facto a president of European Union. What she says, is listened to, respected, and eventually obeyed. The UK is boycotting the EU and EURO projects and it's pretty obvious. People all over Europe are learning German now, especially in Spain. Knowing English in Europe is expected, but it's not enough if you want to get a job in Germany.
Edited by Medulin on 25 June 2012 at 4:03pm
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5028 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 22 of 39 26 June 2012 at 11:50am | IP Logged |
German is a really good choice now but should Euro get out of the crisis during the
years to come, Spain, Portugal, perhaps Italy will be in need of many professionals
because theirs will already have made careers in Germany, Great Britain or Skandinavia
and won't feel like leaving it all behind. Germany can give jobs to many immigrants now
but in future, the market could be quite saturated and your number one question, when
pondering future in Germany, might be "what job must I become good at"?
If you don't consider having a job in the country but more an international business,
than I would find logical to choose the language following your area of business. If
the Germans are those you wish to deal with, learn German. If the french have got what
you need, learn French and so on. It is great to deal with people in their language but
if it is impossible, you are much more likely to use English than German. Most young or
middle age people are far better in English than in their third language (no matter
which one it is).
But European Union as a whole is not so significant these days. And there are so many
people learning and knowing European languages. So, if you have the courage to learn
another one, such as Mandarin or Arabic, it might be a really wise decision, in my
opinion.
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eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4720 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 23 of 39 26 June 2012 at 12:22pm | IP Logged |
nway wrote:
Try doing business in China without knowing Chinese. |
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..Actually I have met many that do just that....
Edited by eggcluck on 26 June 2012 at 12:24pm
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decamillisjacob Newbie Canada Joined 4751 days ago 38 posts - 63 votes
| Message 24 of 39 28 June 2012 at 3:53am | IP Logged |
Don't forget French. It might have lost its status to English a few decades back, but the Francophone world isn't short in either business or technology---and we still do everything in French and expect that everyone works with us in French too. A lot of former colonies still use French as a language of education as well. It definitely is not where English is at, but it is still not useless either!
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