The Most Important Languages for Business 

 

For most businesses, the ultimate goal is to become a global brand that has a presence in a lot of different national markets. One of the biggest challenges in obtaining this status is communication challenges, due to the coming together of different cultures and languages. 

 

Poor communication can set a business’ expansion back, as values and core focuses may get lost in translation. To combat this, it’s important that businesses either have personnel or services on hand that can enable them to communicate with multiple nationalities. Of course, the native language is the most important depending on where you’re expanding your business, but in general, here are the vital languages for business – besides English. 

 

Mandarin 

 

Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in China, the most populous country on Earth. In total there’s well over a billion speakers of Mandarin, making it a super useful language to have access to. 

 

Despite the high volume of speakers, you won’t get much use out of the language outside of China, however, with China having one of the largest economies in terms of purchasing power parity, it’s likely to be an early destination for expanding Western businesses, with many sourcing materials from there and creating manufacturing centers. Basic knowledge in Mandarin can make trading a lot easier and open your business to a huge Asian market. 

 

What’s also interesting is that Mandarin is also widely spoken in places such as Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, which have the potential to become attractive markets as they have some of the fastest-growing economies in terms of production. 

 

Learning Mandarin is difficult, due to the use of a separate alphabet unlike the Latin one. Therefore, it’s advisable to hire translation companies to aid with your communications, rather than attempting to learn it yourself. 

 

Spanish

 

Spanish is a good language for businesses to have access to because, although its number of speakers isn’t huge, it is used in a wide array of countries, giving you options to expand in places such as Europe as well as South America. Furthermore, Spanish can be a good asset to have as it can help you fully maximize your audience in the United States as well, as almost 30% of the US population speaks the language, not to mention that the US is set to become the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. As well as this, it’s said 34% of business in the UK is done in Spanish too. This means that if you want to expand into a lot of different locations, then Spanish can be really beneficial. 

 

Arabic 

 

Arabic is a very good specialist language to obtain, as it can open the door to some lucrative business deals in the Middle East, which is growing into more of an international powerhouse. Although a lot of business in Saudi Arabia has grown due to the oil and gas industry, the area isn’t confined to that sector, as it’s now making big waves in tourism, infrastructure and fashion. 

 

Arabic is also spoken widely throughout the rest of the world as well, and can be a good language to help you expand into Northern African too, such as Egypt and the very exciting economies of Tunisia and Morocco (where French can also be of benefit).