Making business English-only, in Korea

Some businesses in Korea have an English-only mandate.

The company plans to adopt English as the sole official language for all its employees in 2012, according to Kim Sung-dae, director of the OCI public relations office.

"The reason behind this is because exports already account for 80 to 90 percent" of sales, Kim told Yonhap.

The move, of course, comes with huge costs for the companies, not just in terms of money but also in time and energy as communications between their employees are often hampered by their poor English skills.

They, however, say it is a price they are willing to pay.

"We are still in the very early stages of the plan and there must be significant amounts of stress placed on our employees," said the official from Korea East-West Power Co.

"The point is to encourage our employees to continue learning until speaking English becomes natural or sort of a habit."

Eating your words

Although the owner of the diner that insisted patrons speak English maintains that his policy has nothing to do with its closing, being rude to people can't be the best business model

The restaurant's owner, Greg Simons, closed his restaurant on Wednesday.

Simons made waves in March when he posted a sign on the door banning customers who don't speak English.

Simons said the closure has nothing to do with the sign, but that he needs to tend to his mother's health and doesn't have time to devote to the restaurant.

Talking about talking

The Language As Culture blog posts and reacts to a TED talk on the supremacy of English. The essayist's analysis on one of the points raised:

policy makers fear the increasing number of Spanish speaking immigrants will somehow threaten the large hold English has on power in America. The point here is that measuring language’s values can be done but it is pointless because language is not a lone factor in deciding policies that affect an entire nation and groups of people (education, voting, etc….).