English is often cited as the world’s most global language, but it’s a well-known fact that it’s not the world’s most spoken language.
In fact, the number of Mandarin Chinese speakers was already twice the amount of English speakers in 1999, and as Chinese economy and business continues to grow, it’s often suggested that Chinese will overtake English as the world’s new global language.
Clearly, the actual numbers of speakers worldwide for any language is going to be an underlying factor in any language’s global significance. But in 2012, when so much communication and business happens online, it’s also of crucial interest that English wins hands-down on the internet stats.
English is still the Language of Business
Few can deny the benefits of having Chinese as one of your languages, but another interesting fact can be gleaned from general business polls. A recently-published article in Reuters suggests that even today, English still wins as the default language for business communication around the world.
The survey in question was conducted on a sample of 16, 344 employed adults from 26 different countries; over two thirds of this sample believed English was the language most required when dealing with people beyond their borders.
Singapore provides a useful case study – this city-state is, according to the World Bank, the easiest place to do business. It’s hard to overlook the importance of this fact considering Chinese and English are the most widely spoken languages in this region.
Nearly three quarters of Singapore are Chinese ethnically, but it’s difficult to find somewhere in this city state that does not also understand English.
Multilingualism is the Biggest Industry Around
The above information is central to the question of English vs. Chinese - even Chinese companies which choose to operate in Chinese, benefit from seeking managers that speak both Mandarin and English for the purposes of international expansion.
In the long run then, it seems not a question of English being replaced by other rising languages, but of its co-existence with them.
In terms of business prospects, there are few sectors so good to get into right now as English language teaching, as people everywhere recognise the necessity of knowing such global languages as well as their own native tongues.
Partly, this is because the world today is defined by communication and networking – we have increased travel and mobility all round, and unprecedented developments in the online world have taken place in the last 10 years.
As an employee, master the key languages and you’ll always find work.
‘Globish’ and Great Business Models for Now
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| Image by: Horia Varlan |
When it comes to English and it’s prevalence around the world, the British Empire is often cited as a negative factor.
Another reason for its pervasiveness though lies in the elasticity of English as a linguistic category: Singlish (Singapore), Estglish (Estonia), Spanglish (Spain) represent just a few of the ways in which the language has lent itself to idiosyncratic modification and variation across regions.
This is what led Robert McCrum to give the basic form of written English now in existence a new name: ‘Globish’. There are many regional variations to English but there is also a basic, Standard English of e-mail, Twitter and text messaging that comes into business play on a daily basis around the world.
All in all, the ability to communicate and perform across the world stage has now become a vital ingredient in an increasingly international and online business world – and English definitely still plays a central role in all this.
This is why now is the perfect time to start getting involved with English- learning business franchise models if you’ve ever thought about it before. If anything’s here to stay, the benefits of being multilingual and the industry of teaching English as a foreign language around the world definitely are.
Autho Bio
Elise Lévêque is a bubbly freelance writer who, as a bilingual speaker, has first-hand knowledge of the advantages of being multilingual. She blogs for Pingu’s English, a successful children’s English language course for pre-school children, and supports the master-license franchising opportunities they’re offering to the world.
Elise Lévêqueneeds to be careful about her use of evidence. That impressive looking but undated chart has several weaknesses. Firstly, what on earth are the "top one million websites"? Top, in what sense? Who choses to rule in a site from a history society in Welsh rather than English? Does it perhasps mean "most visited"? The chart does not say so.
Robert McCrum did not invent the name: ‘Globish’. In fact, Globish is a subset of the English language
formalized by the Frenchman Jean-Paul Nerriere – although I, for one don’t find
the term a helpful one.
Thjere are some statistics relating to the "top ten" languages and the web at
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm
I'm not at all convinced that the case in the title "The Business of English Language Learning: An Ever-Growing
Market" has been proved.
Interesting post.
I assume that the top million websites means in terms of Alexa rank, as this is the pool that W3Tech (Web Technology Surveys' real name) usually takes its data from. There is probably a slight bias towards English there, and Alexa is hardly perfect, but I wouldn't be surprised at the idea that there are more highly-trafficked pages full of English-language content than of Chinese content.
The internetworldstats is measuring something entirely different and possibly less relevant to this post, but it is an interesting addition to the discussion.
The wikipedia post on Globish took me on a bit of a wiki-walk...wow, linguistics is interesting.
1) Bill, I ’m sorry that you thought the evidence I used unreliable; here is a link to
the FAQS http://w3techs.com/faq on the W3Tech site, which
explains little more about how they gather their evidence and that their
database is updated on a fairly regular basis (every 3 months at most).
Much of the world does function by communication and
networking, which is why knowing more than 1 language is generally helpful to a
person - I remain faithful to my argument that that the ‘business of English’
is going to continue, but then, so in my opinion is the general ‘business of
language-learning’ as a whole.
1) Hi
James, Thanks for reading my post – you are right in supposing that the chart
is taken from W3Tech and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment :)