your chances of doing business or finding work internationally. Language skills quite literally open doors for new opportunities. Speaking more languages helps you understand the global marketplace better, as well as understanding the wants and needs of international customers, suppliers and partners. Being able to converse directly prevents potentially costly misunderstandings and improves accuracy; it also saves translation costs. On a national level, studies have shown that countries in which a high
proportion of the workforce speaks a second language have a higher proportion of their Gross Domestic Cell Phone Numbers List Product (GDP) from international trade. This is notably true of Switzerland: as a result of the multilingual nature of the country – German, French and Italian are official languages and commonly spoken – now accounts for up to 10% of the country’s GDP. Monolingual countries that do not encourage language learning at a young age – the UK, for example – can miss
international opportunities and lose out on potential earnings, despite the native-English advantage. One UK study suggests that Britain’s lack of foreign language skills costs its economy up to £48 billion ($80 billion) per year. It increases your earning potential Businesses see the correlation between bilingual or multilingual employees and growth in international markets, so they are willing to invest in acquiring staff with strong language skills. A US study estimates that bilingual employees earn up to