Is it courteous, let alone productive, to attempt to build a trading relationship with an overseas company without a basic grasp of their language on the assumption that they speak English well enough?

As a nation we are being encouraged to export but are poor language skills stymying our efforts. Trade, after all, is all about communication.

It has been predicted that the competitive advantage of English will ebb and that monolingual English speakers, unable to tap into the multilingual environments enjoyed by others, will face a bleak economic future.

Studies for the European Commission have shown that the economic benefits of competence in more than one language are not limited to English, and that a wide range of languages are needed to exploit the benefits of the single market and keep improving trade between peoples worldwide.

Even when others have a high level of proficiency in English, this does not mean that their languages can be ignored. In order to develop relations between countries and individuals based on mutual respect and trust, as well as to do business effectively, there is a need for an understanding of the social, political, and technical systems of a country, as well as the innumerable aspects of daily life that are important to that nation’s identity and culture.

As Nelson Mandela said, ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language that goes to his heart.’

A recent report from the British Council analysing economic and cultural indicators suggests not that people in the UK are learning the wrong languages, but that we need far more people learning a much wider range of languages in the future.

French, Spanish and German will continue to be important but we will also need significantly more Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and Portuguese speakers as well as speakers of Italian, Japanese, Russian and Turkish.

Current indicators predict a decline in the Chinese economy but growth in trade from the Indian sub-continent, so we can add Indian languages to the list.

In some more cheerful statistics in this context, the top ten languages spoken by schoolchildren in the UK consist of four from the Indian subcontinent (Panjabi, Urdu, Gujarati and Bengali), three from Europe (Polish, French and Portuguese), and Arabic, Tamil and Somali. The linguistic skills of these children need to be taken into account in any consideration of how language skills can be developed to enhance future cultural and economic contacts between the UK and countries where these languages are spoken.

It is worth remembering that when we think of languages in the UK, we tend to think of ‘going away’. However, given that Japanese car manufacturers, Chinese infrastructure developers and French utility companies all make huge contributions in the UK, you do not need to cross the equator or even the English Channel to find situations and jobs where even a little Chinese, Japanese, or French can be a real career enhancer.

The council’s report identified a list of ten languages which will be of crucial importance for the UK’s prosperity, security and influence in the world in the years ahead and identified 4 key areas of particular relevance for international trade.

1. Current UK export trade

2. The language needs of UK business

3. UK government trade priorities

4. Emerging high growth markets

From the analysis of languages against these indicators comes a list of the ten most important languages for the UK’s future; in order: 1 Spanish 2 Arabic 3 French 4 Mandarin Chinese 5 German 6 Portuguese 7 Italian 8= Russian 8= Turkish 10 Japanese

A survey commissioned by the British Council for this report suggests that three quarters of the UK public are unable to speak any of these languages well enough to hold a conversation. These findings suggest that the UK needs to develop its citizens’ competence in a wider range of languages, and in far greater numbers, in order to reap the economic and cultural benefits available to those who have these skills.

The conclusion of this analysis is that the UK must take a strategic approach in planning for effective development of the language capacity which this country needs. This has implications for businesses, in that they should invest in the development of the language skills from which they will directly benefit.