English Inc.

English is to international communication what VHS is to video, Microsoft to software and Pentium to the microchip. It is, for better or worse, the ‘industry standard’. And those who don’t speak at least a little risk losing business to the increasing number who do. A quarter of the planet currently speaks English. That’s one and a half billion people, two-thirds of whom speak it as a foreign language.

In a recent survey, 69% o Europeans said they thought everyone should speak English. More than half of them already do. For most, it’s not a question of choice but of necessity, as English has rapidly become the first language of business, science and popular culture. Three-quarter of the world’s mail is in English. So are four out of five e-mails and most of what you find on the Internet.

However, not everyone welcomes this linguistic monopoly. The French Ministry of Finance, for instance, recently surprised the international business community by banning English terms like e-mail and Internet. In fact, seven teams of language experts have been employed to come up with French alternatives. Le Web is not acceptable, La toile is. And when the French President himself referred to start-up companies as les start-upistes in televised speech, he was strongly criticized for failing to defend France against the advance of the English language.

The French have a point. Twenty languages disappear every year because nobody speaks them anymore. At that rate, by the end of the 21^st century almost a third of the world’s six and a half thousand languages will be dead. Even in Germany, where Denglish is fashionable, and phrases like Jointventure, Powerpartner and Fitness-Training are common, the leader of the Free Democrats has expressed concern about the ‘flood of anglicisms descending on us from the media, advertising, product descriptions and technology’. Some go so far as to call it ‘a form of violence’.

Maybe it is, and bid business certainly accelerates the process. As Professor David Crystal author of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, puts it, ‘wave dollar bills in front of someone, and they will learn complicated spellings and grammar’.

But what about people who learn languages just for fun? A 37-year-old American, Gregg Cox, has taken this simple pleasure to extremes. He holds the world record for speaking the most foreign languages – sixty-four at the last account! He would undoubtedly be an asset to any company doing international business. But for those of us who are less gifted linguistically, the power of the American dollar means there may soon be only one foreign language we need to learn, and that language will be English.

The number of native speakers of the world’s top ten languages: 1. Chinese (726m), English (427m), 3. Spanish (266m), 4. Hindi (182m), 5. Arabic (181m), 6. Portuguese (165m), 7. Bengali (162m), 8. Russian (158m), 9. Japanese (124m), 10. German (121m).

2. Discuss the following sentences.

a) Do you think the article overstates the importance of English?

b) What other languages might eventually take over from English as the international language of business?

c) Do you agree that big business accelerates the advance of the English language?

3. Read about six business people attitudes to learning English. Whose opinion is closest to your own?

Attitude 1

Well, to be honest, learning English isn’t my idea of fun. I mean rock concerts are fun. Motorbikes are fun. Snowboarding is fun. Learning English isn’t fun. It’s hard work. But it’s worth it. I don’t need English every day in my job right now. But if I want to get on in my career, I know I’m going to need it more and more. English is where the money is, so I just think of it as an investment in my future. We Swiss are very practical like that.

Attitude 2

Hm, well, I accept that English is the language of the media, but I’m not so sure about business. Personally, I know a lot of business people who speak almost no English at all. Twenty-five per cent of the world speaks English. OK, but that means 75% don’t. The way I see it, if I’m trying to sell you something, I should speak your language. But if you come to Ecuador to sell me something, then you should speak Spanish.

Attitude 3

Coming from a tiny country like the Netherlands means we’ve always had to speak foreign languages. So it’s nothing new for us. The same goes for people from Luxembourg, Belgium, Scandinavia. 80% of Dutch people speak English. Most of us speak some German too, or French. We certainly don’t expect anybody to speak Dutch! In fact, the firm I work for recently introduced English as the official company language. So now I speak English all day – to other Dutch people!

Attitude 4

I’m afraid I really don’t like English that much. I find the pronunciation very difficult. It’s certainly not as beautiful a language as my language, which is Italian. And, anyway, I think it’s more difficult as you get older to learn foreign languages. But my company wants me to learn English, so I really don’t have much choice. If a quarter of the world speaks it, I suppose I must too. But I’ll always think in Italian. My brain works in Italian.

Attitude 5

I don’t know why people who speak European languages complain about learning English. Try learning it when your native language is Korean! Actually, I find I can speak English OK, if I’m doing business with other non-native speakers, like Argentinians or Japanese. But with native English speakers, I do feel at a disadvantage. I’ve heard that 60% of British people don’t speak a foreign language at all. Hardly surprising when so many of us have to learn English.

Attitude 6

Well, actually, I love English. It’s true the pronunciation is quite hard to get right, but the grammar is much simpler than my language, Hungarian – at least at the beginning. That’s the thing about English – it’s easy to speak a little quite quickly. It gets harder later, of course. Frankly, I don’t know why some French and German are against using English words. It seems to me that English is full of foreign words – especially French and German!

Attitude 7 This is a rather strange and amusing attitude. Do you think the man who has it is an optimist, a pessimist or …? What are his problems in learning English? What are his recommendations to the learners of English? Do you think the man is serious in his opinion?

When I arrived in England I thought I knew English. After I’d been here an hour I realized that I did not understand one word. In the first week I picked up a tolerable working knowledge of the language and the next seven years convinced me gradually but thoroughly that I will never know it really well, let alone perfectly. This is sad. My only consolation being that nobody speaks English perfectly.

Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishman uses are far from being the whole vocabulary of the language. You may learn another five hundred and another five hundred and yet another five hundred and still you may come across a further fifty thousand you have never heard of before, and nobody else either.

If you live long enough in England you will find out to your great amazement, that the adjective ‘nice’ is not the only adjective the language possesses, in spite of the fact that in the first three years you do not need to learn or use any other adjectives. You can say that the weather is nice, a restaurant is nice. Mr. Smith is nice. Mrs. Smith’s clothes are nice, you had a nice time, and all this will be very nice.

Then you have to decide on your accent. The easiest way to give the impression of having a good accent or no foreign accent at all is to hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your teeth and finish all your sentences with a question: “isn’t it?” People will not understand much, but they are accustomed to that and they will get the most excellent impression.

Many foreigners who have learnt Latin or Greek at school discover with amazement and satisfaction that the English language has absorbed a huge amount of ancient Latin and Greek expressions, and they realize that:

a) it is much easier to learn these expressions than the much simpler English words;

b) that those words as a rule are interminably long and make a simply superb impression when talking to the greengrocer, the porter and the insurance agent.

Finally, there are two important points to remember:

1. Do not forget that it is much easier to write in English than to speak English, because you can write without a foreign accent.

2. In a bus, in other public places it is more advisable to speak softly in good German than shout in abominable English. Anyway, this whole business is not at all easy. After speaking eight years in the country, the other day I was told by a very kind lady: “But why do you complain? You really speak a most excellent accent without the slightest English.”