33. A Language Adventure. Language and International Business

You never step in the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.

- Heraclitus, 6th century BC

In June 1987, I started my own company in lumber export. For six months my wife and I worked out of the basement of our home with a fax machine and a phone. I traveled thousands of kilometres by car in Western Canada. I traveled tens of thousands of kilometres by air to Japan and Europe. Fifteen years later we have offices in Vancouver, Northern Alberta, Sweden and Japan, and a well established international trading business. I could not have done this without my knowledge of languages.

Admittedly success in business life does not depend solely on language skills. There are countless examples of outstanding business people who are able to get by only speaking their first language, especially when that language is English. However, being a linguist can help in many ways, and it certainly helped me.

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This is a part of The Linguist: A personal guide to language learning which you can buy online at TheLinguist website. The paperback is available in English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese and the downloadable PDF e-book is available in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean.

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