By Gemma Torres
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In one of the ads of HSBC bank (The HongKong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is said, as you can see in the photo,there are five times more people learning English in China than there are inhabitants of England.
Curious, isn’t it? This announcement was hung in the New York airport and made me stop in my tracks. How is it possible that there are more people learning English in China than there are inhabitants of England itself? It is a fact that collides if we take into account that the chinese are almost 1.340 million people and that the country has a thriving economy. In that frame of mind it would be logical that the chinese will expect us to be others who learn their language. But read the small print in the ad (the banks always have small print): “The world belongs to those who see its potential”.
In this global world the chinese people learn English, the americans deal with the Spanish and we will have to learn English and chinese if we want to travel and do business with the world. Does not seem to me bad thing, I am convinced that talking is the way people understand.