As regular readers of the blog will know I've been trying to learn Czech for a few months now. I'll happily admit that my efforts have slackened a bit in the last month but nevertheless it's something I hope to continue until I'm able to at least hold basic conversations.
Alas if new research is to be believed, in most instances I won't need to, at least for business conversations. The research suggests that English is by far the predominant language for commerce around the world. They found that countries where English was an official language received much higher rates of investment than other nations. Likewise they discovered that countries with high rates of English proficiency were higher than those without. So being able to speak English would appear to have clear financial implications.
“The vast majority of the world’s trade and investment is actually among or between or involves English-speaking countries,” says researcher Walid Hejazi, an associate professor of international business at the Rotman School of Management. Hejazi co-wrote the paper with Juan Ma, a PhD student at Harvard Business School.
The pair used a so called gravity model framework as the focus of their analysis of 30 nations within the OECD. This allowed them to take account of things such as GDP, population size, colonial histories and exchange rates.
Once they'd discounted these things they could hone in on the impact language had on investment and trade. They found that countries with English as an official language accounted for nearly 50% of all OECD GDP, and 47% of its foreign investment. English-speaking countries also had the highest rates of bilateral foreign investment.
The findings suggest that companies looking to invest internationally need to embed English skills within their workforce, regardless of the local language.
“If you go into France or you go into China, you need to have that local language, no question,” says Hejazi. “But having a proficiency to speak English is also important because if you’re going to communicate in any other language than the official language there, more likely than not, it’s going to be English.”
All of which makes it ever easier for the English speaking world to be lazy and rest on the linguistic laurels. Plow on I shall though.
I'm not surprised by this, but it really doesn't do much to encourage the English to learn other languages, which is I think a shame.
Hope you so far gained good control over Czech language!! It's a tough language I agree because last 4 months I'm also been taking training from a language learning institute. Although I'm not a genuine English speaker but I didn't find English learning so tough compare Czech.