Japanese

Japan's $4.2 trillion economy is the world's fourth-largest, and Japanese companies — Toyota, Sony, Nintendo, Honda, SoftBank — are global forces. Japanese business culture places enormous value on relationship-building, and conducting meetings in Japanese opens doors that English never will. The language has a uniquely complex honorific system (keigo) that mirrors corporate hierarchy. The shortage of Japanese-speaking business professionals in Western markets means those who achieve fluency command significant premiums in consulting, finance, and tech. 125 million speakers.