The Most Impactful Languages to Learn for Business: An 80/20 Piece
Want to learn or hone a language enough for you to do business with other countries?
If you’re a native English speaker, we broke down which languages will take the least time and are worth the investment to learn.
Inspired by a LifeHacker article and a US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) study, we put together the following 80/20 piece for you to learn or hone a language for business with the biggest bang for your time / effort.
Starting with the US FSI study, we have the following time to learn (in weeks) for these major languages.
Accounting for native speakers
We took the ratio of time to learn : number of native speakers, added a coefficient multiplier for friendlier values, and yielded the following chart.
If you want to speak to more people in less time, it looks like it’s worth the investment to learn or hone:
Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin), Portuguese, Hindi, Russian, Arabic, German, French, or Italian.
Accounting for GDP of native countries
We took the ratio of time to learn : GDP of native speaking countries, added a coefficient multiplier for friendlier values, and yielded the following chart.
If you want to go for greater GDP languages in less time, it looks like it’s worth the investment to learn or hone:
Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), German, French, Japanese, Hindi, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, or Korean.
Accounting for GDP per native speaker
We took the ratio of time to learn : GDP per native speaker, added a coefficient multiplier for friendlier values, and yielded the following chart.
If you want to go for greater GDP per native speaker languages in less time, it looks like it’s worth the investment to learn or hone:
Arabic, Swedish, Dutch, French, German, or Italian.
Hopefully this brief article sparks you into learning or honing a foreign language to help you and/or your business.
