English: sine qua non for Business
Trade, migration, and the increase and mixture of population must not only have opened people’s eyes, but also loosened their tongues. It was not simply that tradesmen inevitably encountered, and sometimes mastered, foreign languages during their travels, but that this must have forced them also to ponder the different connotations of key words (if only to avoid either affronting their hosts or misunderstanding the terms of agreements to exchange), and thereby come to know new and different views about the most basic matters. (von Hayek, 1988, p. 106) “In 2015, out of the total 195 countries in the world, 67 nations have English as the primary language of 'official status'. Plus there are also 27 countries where English is spoken as a secondary 'official' language,” honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales and Bangor University, United Kingdom, David Crystal, mentions and states that over the past hundred years, English has come to be spok...