Following the release of the Forbes 2022 World Billionaire List, it became apparent – many of the billionaires are able to speak a second language.
To investigate further, a new study by Preply has revealed the world’s ‘richest’ languages by identifying the top three languages spoken by the world’s wealthiest people.
The data revealed that the top languages spoken by billionaires on this list are Chinese, French and Spanish – which is unsurprising, as China is the third largest country in the world.
For example, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook and worth $67,300,000,000 (£55.8bn) speaks Chinese as his second language. With so many financial possibilities in this country, it is obvious that billionaires would want to be able to make deals there as efficiently as possible.
As the third richest man in the world, Benard Arnault, chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, can speak French, English, German and Italian. With Germany sitting as the third richest country in the world and the UK ranking fifth on the same list, it is not surprising that the billionaire opted to learn these languages.
Following in the footsteps of Bernard and coming seventh on the list is Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, with a net worth of $107,000,000,000 (£88bn). While English is his first language, the entrepreneur also speaks Russian.
Steve Ballmer, 10th on the rich list, is worth $91,400,000,000 (£75bn) and speaks French as well as his first language, English.
To further investigate the correlation between language and wealth, the team at Preply also drew results from the way countries speak about the future, and whether there is a pay divide between bilingual and non-bilingual jobs.
