The general importance of foreign language skills is well known nowadays. With the ongoing globalization any kind of interactions between human beings of different cultures is increasing.
Consequently, people put more and more effort into the process of learning foreign languages. Different fields such as education, business, culture, politics, health care system and scientific research are affected by the significance of foreign languages.

This article focuses on global business with its intercultural actions and points out that successful global business also depends on foreign languages.
The first supporting idea is obvious: In order to interact with people form other countries we need to communicate. ONE common language is the necessary tool.
The second objective might be less obvious, but not less important: Knowing foreign languages does not only contain the language skills itself, but also the knowledge about the foreign culture. When talking about foreign language skills, we often forget that there is a whole new culture or country to explore. To explicate this idea, language means (cultural) identity.

What does this mean concerning global and intercultural business – business where people from different cultures take part in responsible and significant decision-making processes?
People in business have many different relations to each other. They could for example be partners, competitors, clients and providers etc.

Depending on this kind of relation, social and psychological values (often depending from cultural backgrounds) play an important role. This can be explained with the example of ´trust´ – a value that often leads to certain decisions – even in business. Obviously, it is easier to trust someone, if we “know” him or if we are somehow able to assess to someone´s character. Probably, this is even more difficult with people from a foreign culture. But if we learn and experience more about foreign cultures, it might be easier for us to trust those who interact with us. Trust is an important basic value for business.

Cultural differences also mean different social behaviour and different ways of communicating, even if people speak the same language. This often leads to misunderstandings in communication that is caused not necessarily by language/translation problems but by different social acting, as this also depends from our cultural backgrounds.
Finally, this shows the meaning of the expression: language is (cultural) identity and points out that language skills are basic, but without cultural experience, not sufficient for successful global business.

In conclusion, learning languages is a process that should always include the experience of a foreign culture. Therefore it is necessary to spend time in a foreign country. Exploring new cultures widens horizons and gives personal experiences. Additionally, it is of course easier and more exciting and effective to learn foreign languages abroad.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 8:21 am and is filed under Languages and Society, Learn Languages, Learning Abroad. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.