<p>what do you think?</p>
<p>probably german or japanese? although chinese is gonna be huge soon now that it is industrializing</p>
<p>Mine goes to:
1. Chinese
2. Japanese</p>
<p>post your votes!</p>
<ol>
<li>chinese</li>
<li>hindi</li>
</ol>
<p>I agree with Chinese and Hindi</p>
<p>Rank Country GDP (millions of USD)
1 United States 12,485,725
2 Japan 4,571,314
3 Germany 2,797,343
4 People's Republic of China 2,224,811</p>
<p>there is no such language called "chinese" though. there is two languages called mandarin and cantonese</p>
<p>Hindi as a business language? Is that right? I thought English was what they used for business over there.</p>
<p>OK fine mandarin! and Japanese. there</p>
<p>The fact that no one has mentioned Spanish humors me greatly.</p>
<p>is Chinese that useful?? (mandarin & cantonese)
anyone can give me real examples?</p>
<p>no, but the assumption (and probably a correct one) is that the chinese economy is fixing to explode and they will be an integral part of the business world... very, very soon. for example, within 30 years walmart expects to have more stores in china than the U.S.</p>
<p>mandarin and french/arabic will be the most useful by the time most of the people on this forum graduate. Here's some of my reasoning:</p>
<p>-China's going to keep on growing
-Most educated people in India speak English (Hindi will only help you with the rickshaw drivers, etc.)
-No countries that really matter economically speak Spanish..
-If you look long-term, I'd say the biggest emerging market is not in Latin or South America but in Africa, where French and Arabic are prevalent languages</p>
<p>Oh..and make sure you know math..that's truly the language of business</p>
<p>Biggest emerging markets in Africa? Now that is funny. How long term are we looking? In our lifetime there is going to be <em>much</em> more economic activity in South America than Africa.</p>
<p>Swahili, rather than French, will likely become more powerful in Africa. At least, that's what my linguistics prof says. :p</p>
<p>Our (U.S.) biggest trading partners in 2005 were Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany, in that order. Thus, Japanese, Spanish, German, and Chinese (Mandarin, whatever) would be good languages to learn. With the rise of the European Union, German is very useful in business.</p>
<p>Mandarin and Spanish.</p>
<p>what degree of proficiency should be if we learn one as a additional tool in business? as good as our mother-tongue? or merely enough for basic speaking, listening and reading?</p>
<p>1) Mandarin
2) Hindi/Arabic</p>
<p>
[quote]
what degree of proficiency should be if we learn one as a additional tool in business? as good as our mother-tongue? or merely enough for basic speaking, listening and reading?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Be able to converse with ease...</p>
<p>Yea you should be able to converse and schmooze ppl with ur 2nd/3rd lang to be considered business-proficient.</p>
<p>then that takes a long time, especially an asian language</p>
<p>btw it took me about 600 hours to achieve that level in french...</p>