Languages Your Company Should Speak (But Has Never Heard Of)

 This is about growth potential. And survival.

We know the major languages like Chinese and English account for much of the world's population and earning/spending power. But the growth is in areas like Asia, South America and Africa where micro-languages abound.

Research suggests that the percentage of the world's middle classes who currently live in Europe and the US will drop by over 50% in the next generation. Primarily because of middle class growth in other regions. Homogenization of cultural and linguistic norms has led those in developed countries to assume that the rest of the world will simply follow their lead. Apple in China. Prada in Cape Town. Movies everywhere. But a closer examination of the data suggests that the trends are not quite so simplistic. As the following article explains, the individualization accorded by the internet means that marketing success is becoming increasingly dependent on providing a mass message in a customized format. And that includes home or base language. So the survival question is not that of the micro-languages, but of the businesses which must continue to grow. JL

Nataly Kelly comments in Harvard Business Review:

Of nearly 2 billion internet users estimated in 2010, 82% spoke one of 10 macro-languages — English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, German, Arabic, French, Russian, and Korean. And the remaining 18%? They speak one of the world's remaining 6,500 micro-languages.
A few months ago, Microsoft announced the release of Windows 8 in a language that many tech analysts found to be a surprising choice — Cherokee. Just a decade ago, this Native American language had no speakers under the age of 40 with conversational fluency. Today, it has a speaker base of around 16,000 people.
In a similar vein, Google announced last year that it was supporting the Endangered Languages Project, an initiative to allow people to share resources and information about languages on the verge of extinction. Of around 6,500 languages spoken today, approximately 3,000 are considered to be endangered. Google has a history of launching products in languages that fall outside of the mainstream. Its flagship search product has been available in Irish Gaelic for many years, even though the language has only about 133,000 native speakers, all of whom also speak English.
Why do organizations like Microsoft and Google care about languages with so few speakers? Without a doubt, providing members of linguistic minority groups with access to technology in their native tongues is very important. It empowers these communities, enabling their languages to survive and thrive in the digital age. However, before we jump to the conclusion that Microsoft and Google's efforts are solely altruistic, let's consider some important facts.
Back in 2003, Mark Davies carried out an important analysis of gross domestic product (GDP) by language use. He found that speakers of English and Chinese had the most purchasing power, followed by other languages used within major world economies, such as Japanese, Spanish, and Russian. However, the amount of spending power represented by the remaining thousands of languages was significant — accounting for 12.5% of the world's GDP. In other words, according to his analysis, $12.5 out of every $100 corresponds to someone who does not speak a major world language.

Less common languages might not seem that important individually, but when you take them collectively, they pack a powerful economic punch. What's more, their force only stands to grow stronger as time goes on. Meanwhile, the relative importance of English in the world is set to decline. According to research from Brookings Institution scholar Homi Kharas, the global middle class will double in size, from 2 billion people today to 4.9 billion in 2030. The European and American middle classes currently account for 50 percent of the global total, but by 2030, will account for 22 percent. Asia, where more than 2,000 languages are spoken, will account for 64% of the global middle class.
Much of that growth will come from people living in China and India. China has 292 living languages, many of which have millions of native speakers. You might never have heard of Uyghur, for example, but it has 10 million speakers, or about three times the number of residents of Chicago. In India, where 415 different languages are spoken, there are 30 languages that each has more than a million native speakers, such as Kannada, with 38 million speakers (or 12 Chicago's).
It might seem baffling for us to consider that English may no longer dominate in commercial and online worlds. Yet, a prominent British linguist, Nicholas Ostler, highlights the same trend. In his book, "The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel," Ostler examines the conditions that led other languages, like Latin, to fall out of widespread use, arguing that English and its global dominance are currently in decline.
This phenomenon also echoes the findings of the business writer and entrepreneur Chris Anderson, who wrote about the growing importance of niche markets in his book, "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More." Eric Schmidt commented that Anderson's insights "influence Google's strategic thinking in a profound way." That influence apparently extends into Google's view on the long tail of languages and targeting niche linguistic markets, especially as more people around the world come online.
Companies like Microsoft and Google care about less common languages, but not out of charity alone. If you want to maintain your status as a market leader and secure it for the future, one of the savviest options is to develop the market itself. This involves not just taking your product or service into a new market with known demand, but creating conditions that will enable demand to emerge in the first place. One of those conditions? The ability to offer your products and services to people directly, and in a language they call their own.