English Means Business

The international language—the lingua franca for doing business—should continue to be English. Pro or con?

International companies and international commerce generally imply a fundamental need for people to communicate across the globe, at least at a basic verbal and written level. Translation and multilingual communication are important, but unless there is one common language that everyone doing global business can speak, the complexity makes it unwieldy for cross-border businesses to function. Multilingual companies, as well those that use something other than the de facto global language, will always find it difficult to compete with—and will incur higher transactions costs than—those that use a single cross-border language.

We can argue about the merits of the situation, but English already is the language of international commerce. This is not likely to change any time soon. The situation may not be optimal, especially if English is not your strongest language. I admit to having been astonishingly lucky in my choice of birthplace, but using English makes sense.

It was an accident of timing that English happened to be the language of the dominant economic world power when globalization reached a critical growth point. It’s done and it’s working. Even if there exists a better solution (Esperanto didn’t get far), it could never be put in place at this stage in a practical way without a world war or a new dominant power. For its part, China shows far more interest in teaching hundreds of millions of people to speak English than in advancing Mandarin or Cantonese as a global language.
(...) by Maury Peiperl

Article link, English Means Business