Reply to What are the foreign language trends among children of elites now? What are some considerations in picking a language.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Due to work reasons, I've been at events with lots of elites, where everyone is worth at least $100mln, and these events were internationally focused so most people there were non-American, as most of my events are in Europe or Middle East.

Yes, everyone speaks English perfectly or close to it, however knowing their language definitely helps build relationships. As for using Google Translate and airpods or something.. save that for the taxi driver. There are nuances in each language which require knowledge of the language, and do make a difference. For example, in Chinese there are different words when referring to a family member, which is based on birth order (first son, second son, etc) that an auto-translator is unlikely to translate to English (it will just do "son") as it doesn't deem it relevant, but it is. Or a number of languages have a formal and informal second person ("you") like tu and vous in French. This is extremely useful when trying to work out relationships between people, and using the wrong one when addressing a person can really offend them. Google Translate won't get it right, because it's just taking the source "you" in English and doesn't know if it should change it to tu or vous in French for example.

[/quote]

Just studying a language in school won’t teach you the nuance either nor even get you even semi-able to communicate.

You need full immersion with the language by living in that country for years or having a parent / nanny teaching you the language as a native speaker.

The good thing is everyone speaks English and you don’t have to know their language to close the deal.[/quote]

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