The business world is keeping an open eye on Asia, and ISU students are incorporating East Asian studies into their education. Bloomberg rankings lists Mandarin, spoken by 845 million people, as scoring highest in a ranking of languages, excluding English, based on business usefulness. Dr. Roger Thomas, Coordinator for the EA-Studies minor expressed that learning a language is key to understanding a culture. “To learn any language is to better understand human nature. It helps to get inside another culture, and not approach it as an outsider.” Having an inside track is key to business majors – and also to major businesses in the European Union, who are encouraging learning Mandarin. Europeans already speak 3 or 4 languages, and now are seeing the importance of exposure to Asian languages because the market is so significant.”
