Today is the globalization age. For communicating with foreigners, how many necessary languages do we need to learn? Some says that english is enough. Some says that we need english and chinese. How about japanese and korean?


Let me know your ideas.

It is globally understood that english is the language spoken to communicate. Not Chinese. Japanese or Korean.

English, yes, but you may need more within your selling area too, if you will be dealing with customers in person, and they expect you to have a few polite greetings and phrases in their language.

I'd say it depends on where you live and what your customer base will be.

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Originally Posted by joypulv

English, yes, but you may need more within your selling area too, if you will be dealing with customers in person, and they expect you to have a few polite greetings and phrases in their language.

I'd say it depends on where you live and what your customer base will be.

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My son sells globally so, yes, his preferred language is english, but he speaks french. German. Dutch and itilian. His clients prefer english and that is the universal business language. When I travel I expect english and get it !

Also something nobody pointed out, when Chinese was mentioned... there is no single Chinese language, the two major ones are Mandarin and Cantonese, and they are significantly different from each other. Also Chinese like Japanese and Korean, each use unique characters used in no other language.

And there is about 3500 written Chinese characters, and I will be blunt, the translation and communication is difficult. A person in southern rural China may not always understand fully the Chinese from the north.

But for business and computer, English has been accepted as the International Language. Almost every Chinese learn written English in middle and high school, and the majority of university students learn spoken English.
** which is what I do here in China