The English Language As The Language For International Business

As markets continue to globalise and trade continues to internationalise, professionals from all types of organizations from multinational corporations down to small-to-medium sized companies are coming together more to do business at the international workplace. The international workplace is a place where people of different cultural and social backgrounds come together. They often adopt a common communication language. English for International Business is a useful tool in multilingual environments, but it can be difficult to use between speakers who do not speak English as their first language.

English is a universally understood language, especially by people from other English-speaking nations and Americans. However, French was once considered to be the only language of the elite. The world has used many languages as contact and communication languages. Since Roman times there have been multiple languages in Europe, such as Greek, Latin and French. These “Big Languages”, also known as the “Big Three”, are still widely spoken throughout Europe. However, these are not only the languages that are used for communication.

Through the Confucius Institute, the Chinese government promotes Mandarin as an official international language. However, due to its unique patterns and the difficulty of writing the Chinese characters in English it was not possible. Spanish is the second most popular language with 1.75 billion speakers. This leaves only one of every four people speaking english. English is promoted by multinational businesses like Nokia, Microsoft and Apple. English is easier to learn and to use in trade.

The British colonial system spread the English language around the world by imposing it on non-English speaking people in the colonies. English became more influential in the early 20th century. English became the dominant language for communication within organisations like the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century, due to America’s economic, political and military power.

English is relatively easy to learn and understand. I feel this is one of the reasons for its worldwide popularity. It’s possible that other major languages have the same characteristics. However, English has the largest vocabulary of all languages.