Multilingualism is common these days. It is hard to find individuals who don’t speak any language other than their mother tongue. Many people learn them for fun or because their school or college syllabus has it, but there are also individuals who learn it because the time demands so. Being able to speak multiple languages is highly appreciated in the corporate world and also helps in economic growth.

Languages have the potential to affect the economy of a country vastly. A country like the United Kingdom, with poor language skills or fewer languages diversity is losing 3.5% of its GDP every year. On the other hand, for the exact same reason, Switzerland, which has four national languages namely, Italian, German, Romansh, and French is contributing 10% to its GDP.

According to a research study based on small and medium scale businesses, states that companies that focused more on hiring multilingual employees or the ones that have invested in offering language training to their employees were able to export their goods to more number of countries. Whereas, the businesses which were not in support of multilingualism missed out on many contracts.

In contrast to the UK, America is a country that has diversity and cultural mix. They have a vast pool of languages. Interestingly, although English is the first language of the nation, it isn’t the national language. The country has a great mix of various languages which is benefiting its economy and business relations with other countries. More American businesses are expanding themselves to multiple markets and gaining benefits from them. Languages, other than English, which are commonly used in the United States include: Spanish, Chinese/Mandarin, French, German, Arabic, Russian, Hindi and more.

There is a saying from Willy Brandt which states “If I am selling to you, I speak your language. But if I am buying, then you have to speak my language”. Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg follows this mantra in life and thus, learning Mandarin because his company is trying hard to penetrate through China’s market for a long time now.

These languages are not limited to professional benefits alone but have academic advantages as well. Students planning to move to foreign countries for higher studies and better opportunities can also get benefited by knowing the local or the native language of the country.

It hard to select the most important languages out of the 7,000 living languages of the world. But, do you know that out of this number only 23 languages covers more than half of the world’s population. And, the 10 most important languages out of these include:

English

One of the world’s highest speaking languages, English is by far the most important language of the world. There are approximately 375 million individuals who are native English speakers, but on a worldwide basis, the language is being spoken by more than 1.5 billion people. English is considered to be one of the highly influential languages.English is considered as the mother tongue of computer technology and the internet. It is everywhere and also the major language of the UK, US and Canada, which comes under the biggest economies of the world.

Chinese

The language with the highest number of native speakers with 982 million individuals, Chinese is the most spoken language in the world. Out this huge number, more than 1.1. billion people speak the Mandarin dialect of the language. The language is not only popular and spoken in China alone, but it is also one of the highly spoken foreign languages in the US. Majority of the Chinese speakers are in the country of China, which is a very powerful nation and one of the top economies of the world, which makes it an important language.

Spanish

Spanish is a widespread language with more than 330 million native speakers and around 420 million people use it as their second language. It is national or the primary language of around 20 countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Africa. The majority of these countries are in Latin America. The language is equally popular and is highly used by the Americans as well. Whereas, around 35 million of the US population speak Spanish at home.

Japanese

One more Asian language comes under the list of the most important languages in the world. Japanese enters this list due to the economic strength of the nation. There are around 127 million native Japanese speakers and approximately one more million people use it. The language is not much popular in other countries than Japan, but if you are dealing with modern industries like information technology and automobiles, Japanese can be helpful.

German

German is the most spoken language in Europe while Germany has been a dominant economy of the continent. Around 105 million speakers speak German natively and more than 80 million people across the world use it as a second language. The language deserves to be on this list because the country is one of the global powers.

Russian

The Russian language belongs to the world’s greatest novelists and is being spoken by 150 million as their first language and more than 110 million individuals speak it as nonnative language. The language is one of the most influential ones all around the Euro-Asian countries, which helped it to make it to this list. 38 territories have it as their official language.

French

French is the primary language of 79 million population but in totality, more than 370 million speak the language. The number of speakers is one of the reasons why the language is important; France being the 6th largest economy is another one.

Arabic

The language is popular and widely used in middle east countries and includes 22 nations. The economic growth of some of the middle east countries is producing great results that attract more businesses to invest into these countries. This makes it one of the important languages in the world. There are 205 million native Arabic speakers and the language is spoken additionally by another 100 million individuals.

Hindi

There are more than 450 million native speakers for the Hindi language and around 200 million people use it as their second language. Hindi is the fourth most spoken language on the planet. It is the national language of India which is the 7th largest economy currently and is expected to be the second largest by the end of the year 2050.

Portuguese

The total number of speakers of the Portuguese language is 235 million out of which 215 million are the native speakers. It is the national language of nine countries and is majorly used in the Southern Hemisphere which is why it is in the list of the important languages.

To promote your business in these strong economy countries, it is vital to communicate the local audience in their native language. This can be easy to achieve for the businesses who opt for language translation services from Click For Translation. We support 100+ languages and different language combinations. Contact us for more details.