Perhaps, those eager American parents signing up little Johnny and Susie for Mandarin lessons may not be as overzealous as previously thought. Bilingualism is on the rise, and nowhere is that more clear than in Asia. In fact, Uniqlo CEO Tadashi Yanai recently remarked in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun that non-English speakers will be out of a job within the next ten years. Yanai, one of Japan’s few billionaires, has been a vocal critic in recent weeks of Japan’s deep-rooted aversion to change. His platform for change? English-fluency. Starting in 2012, Uniqlo will officially begin the process of switching their official company language to English despite operating primarily out of Japan with a mostly Japanese workforce. When asked what he thought of students desiring to work for Uniqlo who excel in every area except English, Yanai bluntly replied “We don’t need such students.” Ouch.
As any traveler to Asia will tell you, the region’s fascination with the English language ranges from atrocious to half-decent to the unintentionally hilarious. Pictures of shirts and products with unintelligible ‘Engrish’ are often lampooned on the Internet and make popular souvenirs among Westerners. But laughter aside, Asian business leaders are serious about sharpening the English skills of their employees. Wealthy Chinese and Korean parents are shipping their children off to colleges in the U.S. to level up their English skills. Even notoriously insular Japanese companies are looking to increase hires of foreign students with multilingual capabilities.
But if Asia is scrambling to improve its English, does that mean Westerners looking to crack the Asia-Pacific market can kick up their heels and relax? Is it time to pack away the language books and toast to the English language’s slow but sure march as the world’s first official language? Not quite. Here’s 3 reasons why Westerners should keep a close eye on the bilingual craze sweeping across Asia.
1. Familiarity = Competitive Edge
Regardless of personal experience, everyone’s heard a story about a friend (or maybe a friend of a friend) who called up customer service and perhaps couldn’t fully understand their Indian operator. But according to a recent New York Times report, U.S. companies including AT&T, Expedia and JPMorgan are now relocating their call centers to the Philippines. In fact, the Philippines has now surpassed India as the world’s biggest call center with 350,000 jobs to India’s 330,000. How did they do it? English-language ability.
Because the Philippines was once a U.S. colony, Filipinos speak American English as opposed to the British-English spoken by their Indian counterparts. They’re also more likely to be familiar with American pop culture and slang. As such, outsourced calls become less noticeable to the average American customer who is then, less likely to complain due to communication difficulties. It’s win-win.
The numbers don’t lie. Philippines-based call centers earned $6.3 billion last year and the industry is estimated to grow by 25-30 percent a year as more firms look to set up shop. Now compare that to India’s expected growth rate of 10-15 percent, and it’s easy to see how powerful familiarity can be. Imagine harnessing some of that advantage for your own business. But it won’t come by waiting for Asia to become fluent in English overnight.
2. Bilingualism is the Way of the Future?
One need look no further than Singapore to see where globalization might look like in the future. Founding Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew recently launched a proposed S$100 million fund to promote bilingual education starting as early as pre-school. With four official languages (English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil), Singapore is Asia’s melting pot. It’s also a good case study of “The Bilingual Experiment”; after gaining independence in 1965, the government made English it’s main language for its administration and education system as a means to bridge the various ethnic groups and increase its international profile.
Since then, roughly 80 percent of Singaporeans are able to speak the language–though only 23 percent of the population speak it as their native language. Long story short, it took Singapore–a populous but still relatively small city-state–nearly half a century to get 80 percent of their population English literate. The hard facts are that while Asian countries and biz might be pushing for greater English skills, it’ll take decades to actually get there. After all, Japanese schools have been teaching English for decades and you’d still have to be pretty lucky to find a fully bilingual Japanese on the streets of Tokyo.
3. “The Mindset”
Even if English-language ability in Asia improves drastically, in the short-term, knowing the local lingo offers greater insight into what interests the Asian market. Besides, just because they speak English–it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll understand what’s being said. Plenty of American executives learned this lesson the hard way in the 1980s when trying enter the Japanese market, where “We’ll think about it” often meant “Not a chance, bub.”
Just ask Yanai, who said that:
“…I want to emphasize that English is merely a tool for business. Japanese will remain the standard language for our thinking and culture. We have no intention of assimilating our thinking to those of overseas enterprises.”
Translation: Our days may be numbered without English, but you’d be crazy to think it means we’re suddenly going to be Western.
Engrish photo by Peter E. Lee (mostly offline), call center photo by barracuadz on flickr
