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During a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session earlier this year, Microsoft founder and prolific philanthropist Bill Gates said his biggest regret in life is that he speaks only English and not another foreign language.
Not exactly what one would expect to hear from the billionaire founder of one of the largest tech corporations in the world.
Gates’s insightful admission comes on the heels of Mark Zuckerberg’s impressive demonstration of semi-fluent Chinese during a Q&A with Tsinghua University students in Beijing last October. By learning Chinese, Zuckerberg demonstrated that mastering a foreign language is a crucial step toward developing deeper business relationships and winning the hearts and minds of target markets — and he’s right.
Here are 5 of the best options to consider when learning a foreign language.
1. Spanish
Of all the languages in the world, Spanish is the language online translation agencies work with the most, reflecting an enormous market worldwide. Aside from the massive potential of almost all of South and Central America with emerging economic powerhouses such as Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela — not to mention the significant market in Spain itself — learning Spanish is worth it if only to reach the Hispanic speaking community in the U.S., whose purchasing power is already more than a trillion dollars and growing.
As opposed to its spoken dialects, Spanish’s written forms are more uniform than other languages, which makes them simpler to learn. As a Romance language with the same letters and roots as English, you’ll probably twist your tongue a lot less than when learning Chinese.
2. Portuguese
Portuguese has already become the fourth most-translated language at our company, reflecting an exponential rise in recent years. It’s not Portugal we’ve got our eyes on here, but Brazil is quickly transforming from an emerging market to one of the world’s wealthiest nations. With a considerable population, tons of natural resources, and a growing tech community, learning Portuguese will go a long way to penetrating the intricacies of the local business culture. Plus, imagine the fun of speaking the local tongue come Carnival time.
3. Mandarin
There are dozens of different languages and dialects spoken in China. While Mandarin is by far the most widely spoken, it’s the most prevalent language in the world with 1.1 billion native speakers — hundreds of millions speak other Chinese dialects of people.
Wu, for example, used in the financial hub of Shanghai, is spoken by more than 80 million people — that’s a potential market the size of Germany! Learning Wu, Jin, Min, or Yue will undoubtedly be worth the effort, depending on what area of China you’re targeting and the fact that written dialects in the country are uniform.
4. Arabic
Hundreds of millions worldwide speak Arabic — the fifth most-spoken language in the world — so it is no surprise that Arabic is number 10 on our list. The Arab world, with a growing online culture, doesn’t have its own Amazon or Alibaba, making it a market with huge potential, not to mention the deep petro-economies of the region. Executives who speak their language will have a leg up in this cross-continental market. The drawback? With dozens of distinct varieties of spoken Arabic, choosing the right one will be daunting.
5. German
German is the second most-translated language at agencies, reflecting the country’s status as Europe’s largest economy and one of the strongest economies in the world. Enough said.
Learning a foreign language may be a significant investment of time and energy, but speaking even a rudimentary level of a country’s native tongue goes a long way to breaking down walls.
