Post-Brexit Britain 'needs to learn Spanish to trade', says report
Tuesday, November 28, 2017 @ 10:05 PM
IF BRITAIN wants to make a success of 'trading with the world' post-Brexit, it needs to work on its language skills – starting with Spanish, a recent study argues.
The British Council, which works with foreign exchange students in the UK and British students abroad, as well as culture and education in general, says if the world is going to be the country's future oyster, it will need more and more professionals fluent in a language other than English.
Spanish, Chinese, French, Arabic and German are recommended in that order.
The UK will also have to work hard on reinforcing its bilateral relationships with individual EU member States, since they are closer geographically and will still be important for trade, the British Council says.
“A global Britain means being multi-lingual is going to become essential, although the current linguistic reality in the UK is very different,” says the report.
“We have to get out of the mantra that 'English is the international language for business' and start to understand the importance of learning other languages, and of the various circumstances in which they are being used either concurrently with, or at the cost of, English.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com