(Business) English – The Lingua Franca of the New EU Economic Environment

Abstract

This paper deals with language and its impact upon the business environment, with special focus on the way inwhich English is emerging as an interlanguage of a United Europe. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate thatthe knowledge of English, the common dialect of the EU and of any other European language, is crucial to business.Moreover, people doing business in Europe and elsewhere in the world should learn foreign languages or improvetheir linguistic competences in their attempt to conquer new markets and to establish new partnerships. If nowadaysspeaking a foreign language is quite enough and thus very common, in the near future good linguistic competencewill be defined as knowledge of two or more foreign languages.