<p>Thanks UCLAri.</p>
<p>wallstreetjosh, indeed, especially many Poles, Czechs and Hungarians are actually fluent at German, mainly due to common features in geopolitical history.</p>
<p>Come on, cyrillic isn’t so different from the Latin alphabet, and at least it’s an alphabet as opposed to some other writing systems 
<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/weta/faceofrussia/reference/img/cyrillic-alphabet.gif[/url]”>http://www.pbs.org/weta/faceofrussia/reference/img/cyrillic-alphabet.gif</a>
(BTW Cyrillic is also used in other slavic languages.)</p>
![http://www.pbs.org/weta/faceofrussia/reference/img/cyrillic-alphabet.gif[/url]](http://www.pbs.org/weta/faceofrussia/reference/img/cyrillic-alphabet.gif%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>Private_Joker, I think that at least from an EU point of view there can be many advantages in being able to communicate at a deeper level with Eastern Europe. Currently, most of the “newcomer” countries are to “western” Europe like India is to the Silicon Valley in USA.
I can also imagine that there could be advantages to the rest of the world. I can virtually think of any business, trade and opportunities.</p>
<p>With regards to language and historical sensitivities towards Russian, I believe the situation is somewhat analogous to the ex-colonies of the British Empire towards English; just look at a few Bollywood films and how they depict the historical Englishmen.
Nonetheless, many still speak the language; and at a practical/everyday life level, nobody seems to have time to care about historical rivalries. They normally interact with each other, especially those who are now young adults and teenagers; the future colleagues at work.
(this is actually not statistics but from my personal experience and interactions with them, and we have a great flow of foreign, exchange and MBA students from all over the slavic and baltic realms)</p>
<p>I recalled that I recently read something about developments in Islamic Finance. Furthermore, Dubai, the Gulf, Oman, Qatar are nice words to the ears of luxury and services industry.
Ever considered MSA (modern standard arabic)?</p>