Learning Basic English

English has become the international language of business and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Whether it's a German project manager dealing with a French auto parts manufacturer or a Chinese software developer advising a Mexican medical center the intermediary language is English. So why exactly has English taken front stage when there are so many other languages spoken by a much greater number of people over much vaster regions? The answer lies in the in the simplicity of the grammatical structure of the English language at its most basic level. Unlike most other languages English doesn't use the genitive case for definitive articles. This means that every "thing" in English uses the pronoun "it" and the definite article "the".

In many other languages an object can be masculine, feminine or neutral and the gender of the object can affect the whole sentence. It can also change the endings of pronouns which can make learning the basics a little confusing. The same problems apply to adjectives, adverbs and then add pronunciation to the equation to top it off. And this is only dealing with European languages which stem from Latin, Greek and near eastern roots. When one looks at Chinese, Japanese, Arabic etc. then one can appreciate the difficulty of learning even the most basic structures of these languages.

Of course, there are also political, historical and economic reasons for English being the most used language when it comes to modern business but the fact that it is easy to get a grasp of Basic English has to be the most appealing advantage for non native speakers of English. Ironically, it is communication between the native English speaker and the non-native English speaker that tends to create the most problems. The reason for this is the tendency of the native English speaker to slip into colloquial speech, slang, idiomatic language, speak too quickly or a simple matter of harsh regional accents. But when two or more non-native English speakers communicate in Basic English it usually works out fine because nobody is out to impress and the ultimate goal is to simply understand and respond at a simple level. This is not to say that English doesn't have complexities, in fact at higher levels it can be just as difficult as any other language but as long as a learner uses the famous K.I.S.S. technique (Keep It Short And Simple) it is definitely the easiest language for global communication.

Nigel Nix has been teaching business English in Germany for 9 years.

German professionals interested in learning English can contact him here: Business English Training Essen Germany.

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