Popularity of English proves Achilles heel

LONDON - The dominance of English as the world's top language - until recently an advantage to Britain and the United States - is beginning to undermine the competitiveness of both nations, a major research report says.

The British Council report says monolingual English graduates "face a bleak economic future" as multilingual competitors flood into the workforce from all corners of the globe.

A huge increase in the number of people learning English is under way and likely to peak at around 2 billion in the next decade.

The report, English Next, points out that more than half of all primary school children in China learn English and the number of English speakers in India and China - 500 million - exceeds the total number of mother-tongue English speakers elsewhere in the world.

These new polyglots, and the companies that employ them, have significant competitive advantages over their monoglot rivals, including a vital understanding of different cultures in a world faced with rapid globalisation.

"The competitive advantage of speaking English is ebbing away," said the author of the report, linguistic consultant David Graddol. "Once everyone speaks English, advantage can only be maintained by having something else - other skills, such as speaking several languages.

"At a corporate level, the UK and US economies have been enjoying a huge benefit from having so many English speakers elsewhere in the world. They can outsource overseas to India - allowing them to cut costs and boost growth."

But Graddol said there were mounting disadvantages for US and British companies if they stayed monolingual. Companies from other countries could use the same methods to cut costs. And those foreign competitors could also trade and take orders in other languages.

"We know from trade associations that small and medium-sized British firms are losing a lot of business because they can't even answer calls from abroad on the switchboard," Graddol said.

About 30 per cent of the British population speaks a language other than English, but about half of these people had that other language as a mother tongue. In the US, 22 per cent of the population speaks a language other than English, mainly Spanish, and many of these people have Spanish as their first language.

Graddol suggests that British higher education may already be suffering from being monolingual.

The number of foreign, particularly Chinese, students entering UK universities was falling as colleges in other parts of the world offered courses in English at lower cost.

English-language teaching now earns Britain up to £1.3 billion ($3.4 billion) directly and other education-related exports brought in another £10 billion a year.

ENGLISH SPEAKERS

* 2 billion people will speak English by the next decade.

* 500 million people in China and India speak English.

* About 30 per cent of the British population speaks a language other than English.

* In the US, 22 per cent of the population speaks a language other than English, mainly Spanish.

- REUTERS