Sunday 13 November 2022

COMMERCE ENGLISH, A COMMON CORPORATE LANGUAGE

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the origins of English, a West Germanic language that has become the most international manner of communication, especially in commerce and tourism.

English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain.

English is genealogically West Germanic, closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages; however, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of French (about 29% of modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones.

The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th centuries.

Middle English began in the late 11th century after the Norman conquest of England, when considerable French (especially Old Norman) and Latin-derived vocabulary was incorporated into English over some three hundred years.

Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the start of the Great Vowel Shift and the Renaissance trend of borrowing further Latin and Greek words and roots into English, concurrent with the introduction of the printing press to London. This era notably culminated in the King James Bible and plays of William Shakespeare.

More information: Study

Modern English grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent-marking pattern, with a rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection, and a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order.

Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses, aspect and mood, as well as passive constructions, interrogatives and some negation.

Modern English has spread around the world since the 17th century as a consequence of the worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States of America. Through all types of printed and electronic media of these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation and law.

English is the most spoken language in the world and the third-most spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states.

There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers.

As of 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English. English is the majority native language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland, and is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch.

More information: Lingua Banca

We know that English is the language most used by companies and agents that operate internationally. This is not only true for those who work within an area in English-speaking countries, but also for all those who have contact with other countries and use English as a lingua franca to communicate or manipulate documentation that uses specific vocabulary in this language internationally. 

Therefore, it is not only important to know general English but also to know the English that is used specifically in the context of business. Having a good level of business English can have a very positive impact on a professional career, whether you are a beginner or want to deepen your knowledge.

English for business, it is considered as a separate branch within the study of the English language because it uses a specialized vocabulary and in order to successfully develop a career in the international environment, it is not only necessary to have a good level of general English, but also to know in depth the particularities of commercial English.

It is important to master both written communication and oral communication, as we will have to be able to write and answer letters and emails, make and answer phone calls, attend meetings, give presentations, and understand documentation.

In order to follow a simple conversation, it is necessary to know the basic rules of English grammar, both orally and in writing, and to have a relatively broad vocabulary. 

Knowing English for business would help to highlight the competencies that can be applied in the workplace, especially in the vocabulary that can be found during a telephone conversation, a negotiation or a meeting, and also in general topics related to business relationships on an international scale.

More information: Write Express


The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity;
so have some little frocks;
but they are both not the kind of thing
you can run up in half an hour with a machine.
 
Dorothy L. Sayers

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