Portuguese among most popular business languages

[Mario Ferreira]

http://www.theportugalnews.com/cgi-bin/ ... id=1129-43

Portuguese among most popular business languages
10/9/2011

Research by Bloomberg has found that the Portuguese language is the sixth most frequently used language in the world of business, in a study entitled ‘Most Used Languages in Business’.

Analysis carried out by Bloomberg studied 25 languages from all over the world, though excluding English.

Mandarin, the official language of China, emerged as the most widely spoken language in the world.

According to Bloomberg’s findings, Mandarin is spoken by 845 million people and is the second most widely spoken language within the business world, after English.

Within the world of international business Mandarin is followed by French, which was found to be spoken in 27 countries by a total of 68 million people.

After French comes Arabic, with Spanish being the fifth most widely spoken language within the realms of deal-brokering, spoken in 20 countries by around 153 million Internet users.

Portuguese took sixth place, being spoken by 178 million people. Portuguese is the official language in eight countries and is used by some 82 million Internet users.

Portuguese is followed by Japanese and German, in 7th and 8th place, respectively.

Bloomberg’s ranking was carried out based on the number of people who use a language, the number of countries where it is the official language, cross-referenced with the official languages of the G20 countries.

Even though Mandarin is currently a key language within the business world, Leigh Hafrey, of the Massachusetts Technology Institute, explained on Bloomberg’s website why it will never surpass the English language, saying:

“Just like the dollar continues to be the favourite currency [for business], English will remain the preferred language in the future.”

[Eric Menchen]

Mandarin ... will never surpass the English language

Maybe not this year, maybe not in 50 years, but never say never.

[Andrew E]

My friend who recently started doing international business has told me the same thing when I mentioned I was considering learning Chinese. I think I might try picking it up since I grew up with and am fluent in Spanish, so it shouldn't be as big a leap as Mandarin.

[Glenn E.]

My friend who recently started doing international business has told me the same thing when I mentioned I was considering learning Chinese. I think I might try picking it up since I grew up with and am fluent in Spanish, so it shouldn't be as big a leap as Mandarin.

Spoken Portuguese is closer to French than it is to Spanish. Still probably not as big of a leap as Mandarin, though.

[Roy Hersh]

I would love to see what would happen to the Portuguese language ranking if Brazil was removed from the mix!?!?!?!

[Andy Velebil]

I would love to see what would happen to the Portuguese language ranking if Brazil was removed from the mix!?!?!?!

We wouldn't have Rosetta Stone to teach us true Portuguese...oh, wait

[Mario Ferreira]

I would love to see what would happen to the Portuguese language ranking if Brazil was removed from the mix!?!?!?!

Not only Brazil !!
If you also remove Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guine-Bissau, S.Tome and Prince and East-Timor from the mix, then there's Portugal itself alone.

But, oh well, likewise IF you remove the USA from the mix of the english language, and also IF you remove the other english speaking countries such as South Africa, Australia, ..., etc, .... IF ..., if there's an IF, oh well, the difference would be immense !

[Eric Menchen]

Not only Brazil !!
If you also remove Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guine-Bissau, S.Tome and Prince and East-Timor from the mix, then there's Portugal itself alone.

The GDP of Brazil is more than US$ 2 trillion. Portugal is just under US$ 230 billion. I suspect Brazil is more than Portugal and all the rest combined.

[Mario Ferreira]

The GDP of Brazil is more than US$ 2 trillion. Portugal is just under US$ 230 billion. I suspect Brazil is more than Portugal and all the rest combined.

And for the future, it would be even bigger for Brazil while Portugal is decreasing

[Andrew E]

Yeah, when you have heavy industries such as automotive and aerospace moving in to do business, Brazil kind of takes the cake... And a few cases of port.