UK, US disadvantaged as world learns English

[tanyev]

LONDON (Reuters) — The dominance of the English language is beginning to undermine the competitiveness of both Britain and the United States, according to a major research report.

The report commissioned by the British Council says monolingual English graduates "face a bleak economic future" as multilingual competitors flood into the workforce from all corners of the globe. A massive increase in the number of people learning English is underway and likely to peak at around 2 billion in the next decade, according to the report entitled "English Next".

More than half of all primary school children in China now learn English and the number of English speakers in India and China — 500 million — now exceeds the total number of mother-tongue English speakers elsewhere in the world.

These new polyglots, and the companies that employ them, have significant competitive advantages over their monoglot rivals, including a vital understanding of different cultures, in a world faced with rapid globalisation.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2006-02-21-insufficient-english_x.htm?csp=24

Hoisted on our own petard.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. My brother's junior college

has offered a business degree with a minor in a foreign language for some time, the idea being that bilingual or multilingual folks have an edge in business. All his kids speak German as well as English, and I think his younger daughter is learning Spanish as well.

[Deja Q]

2. Tower of Babel, folks...

[unblock]

3. even my minimal spanish has proved immensely useful

it's been sidelined now that we hired a native spanish speaker, but my 3 years of high school spanish helped secure 3 mexican deals for us.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. I disagree with this completely.

One premise, the growing strength of English as the language of the globe is a fact. Science, math, materials science, patents, and computing (even before the internet) caused a restructuring away from german, french even russian, and towards a more simple, flexible and easily adaptive language. American English fit the bill perfectly. And after the growth of the internets, we find ourselves with one language for all, except perhaps, Mandarin, which allows the globe to communicate with itself.

There is another fact mentioned in the article - the failure of the US to use English properly. Unfortunately, that has more to do with poor schooling, the failure of the Leave no kiddie behind scam and the embarrassing lack of funding. That causes more undermining of our position than the growth of english in other countries.

Look at it this way. When we adopted a certain standard for sending electrons through wire, and built lightbulbs that would light up properly, was it bad that other countries adopted the same standards for communicating electrons from one point to another? heck, no. To the contrary, that gave us a better opportunity to sell more lightbulbs.

Unless our lightbulbs were failing because of design and manufacturing problems. Like ours are.

[Warpy]

5. First they came for the TV manufacturers

then they came for the shoemakers
then they came for the cloth makers
then they came for the office workers.

Can I supersize it for ya?

[Ezlivin]

6. At least we'll be able to understand our captors

Whew. I won't have to worry about a language barrier when the torturer steps into my cell.

[tanyev]

7. Whew! It's so embarrassing when they ask you to do stuff

and you don't understand them.

[IronLionZion]

8. Then lets learn Hindi and Mandarin

I'm trying to learn to speak Hindi since I work for an Indian company. It's hard. But that's what they say about English so it's possible.

Mandarin would definitely be very useful in the near future as China matures economically. And Cantonese to a lesser extent.