A lot of noise was also made about learning Japanese as some brilliant entre to doing business with Japan. Maybe useful if working in Japan, but all I saw was a lot of Aussies winding up in relatively modest jobs working in duty free shops or high school language classes.

North Asian business people involved in the resources trade tend to look a little askance at westerners who speak their language in business, because they prefer to converse in meetings amongst themselves without having to edit their remarks. I suspect this applies in other sectors too.

So I am more than a little sceptical that China Inc or Korea Inc or emerging Vietnam Inc are going to roll out the Red ( China pun )carpet for multi-lingual foreigners.

However, even for the linguistically challenged - get your minds around the emergence of the BRIC economies and other emerging tigers like Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia - the world is re-shaping before our eyes.