[lg policy] The English empire: A growing number of firms worldwide are adopting English as their official language

[Dave Sayers]

"YANG YUANQING, Lenovo’s boss, hardly spoke a word of English until he was about 40: 
he grew up in rural poverty and read engineering at university. But when Lenovo 
bought IBM’s personal-computer division in 2005 he decided to immerse himself in 
English: he moved his family to North Carolina, hired a language tutor and—the 
ultimate sacrifice—spent hours watching cable-TV news. This week he was in São Paulo, 
Brazil, for a board meeting and an earnings call: he conducted all his business in 
English except for a briefing for the Chinese press."

More here: http://goo.gl/89vGZ0.

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, UK
dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers

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