English and the Economy

English is the most widely spoken language in the world, and is the primary language of many countries across the world. Because the United States is such a big country and such a huge superpower as well as large influence on the global economy it is vital to speak the language that we speak if you want to be a truly affective international business. When you are starting a business and you want it to involve trade or services with another country, you send people over that country to do recon and make connections, If that person didn’t speak the language of the country they were visiting then it wouldn’t be a very good first impression or reflection of your business. American love to travel and visit “exotic” places, a lot of countries rely on this to keep the businesses in their country afloat. Rarely anybody who travels for pleasure know how to speak the native language, so in order to communicate in banks, grocery stores, outlet stores and restaurants those businesses have to have some kind of accommodations for those tourists. If they want to get their money. When I was a sophomore in high school my Grandmother decided to take me and my family to Europe, to get the whole “European experience” and it was a lot of fun. We visited England and there wasn’t a language barrier other than trying to understand some hard accents, but even that was easy. We visited Germany and there was a big language barrier, but they always had english accommodations. Most of the street signs had english under the german, the menus had english translations on them, and most of the people actually spoke english which I found to be very interesting. I learned that it is a requirement in school for the students to study the English language. The Germans know how important it is for them to understand and speak English. We visited France and it was much like Germany, but not as accommodating as far as menus and street signs, but because we were in Paris which is a huge tourist town, most of the people in hotels and restaurants spoke English. We also visited Rome, Italy which was about the same as Germany and France, most everything was very accommodating and a lot of people spoke our language. These are some personal examples that I have experienced that have made it very clear how important it truly is to be able to speak English. In my opinion I think being able to speak english keeps a lot of the economies of these countries going, especially of the tourists towns. China and America are so intertwined in each others economies that they need to be able to communicate, being able to speak clearly and communicate to each other it really helps things run smooth. We rely on China and China relies on us so in order to keep a somewhat healthy trading relationship English needs to be a priority.