Business Sense

According to "Reasons for Studying German" which used to be on the imsa.edu website (I copied it in April of 2001), the main reason appears to be economic, which ought to concern those who are in business or taking business courses. While German ranks only 12th in terms of the number of people who speak it, it ranks third when considering all countries' GNP's. (German ranks behind only English and Japanese.) The United States in particular is in a reciprocal financial relationship with Germany: the majority of each country's foreign investments go to the other. This implies that while the U.S. has a mutual trade relationship with many countries, it looks to Germany for the largest share and exchange of monies. And Germany takes first place in world exports. It obviously has a huge part to play in international economics.

If countries stand to gain much from interaction with one another, it only makes sense to shoot for the highest level of communication. It is not enough for one country -- or one person, for that matter -- to learn the language of the other, while the recipient passively accepts what it is given. Would you want to leave it up to chance if you were trying to communicate with a potential business partner? The learner of a second language, no matter how proficient she or he is, is never going to approximate the knowledge of a native speaker, especially when idiomatic phrases are being used, which is almost always. Unless one has spent years in a foreign country speaking primarily with native speakers, it is extremely difficult to ensure that communication will go smoothly and without errors. Imagine how much more difficult it is when the speaker has only a rudimentary knowledge of the other language.

[See "Seven Reasons to Study German".]