<p>Indeed, UCLAri, Japanese and Mandarin are entirely different languages. Some mandarin-speakers seem to understand or interpret Kanji more easily, but I think that even this will no more be an advantage since more and more people in China are being taught the standardized modern writing system.</p>
<p>You say that Japan’s financial markets will stay around for a long time?
How would you compare them to the Chinese/HK boom, though?</p>
<p>wallstreetjosh, I would like to add that many Eastern Europeans I encounter everyday speak German either as a second language or know some of it because they have some kind of family ties. Russian is also a kind of lingua franca in some of the ex-UdSSR countries.
And Eastern Europe seems to have an interesting future…</p>
<p>Italian? I really don’t know. As in most other [western] european countries, students start mastering English quite early on. I admit that Italy lags a bit in this process, but anyone in the overall business environment understands English.</p>