Elevator Spoken Here

The Visual Capitalist infographic “A World of Languages” plots out the world’s major languages and shows where they are dominant.

We live in a truly global economy, and nowhere is this more observable than in the elevator industry. The modern elevator may have had its genesis in the United States, but the largest markets today are China and India, countries racing to keep pace with exploding urban populations by building ever-taller residential buildings. Meanwhile, elevator-component manufacturing is becoming an important sector of the industrial economy of more and more countries. The big OEMs are all over this trend, but even mid-sized and smaller companies are looking for footholds and partnerships in far-away lands.

If there is anything all these lands have in common, it most certainly is not language. The people at Visual Capitalist, in yet another example of their knack for distilling complex subjects down to fascinating, easy-to-grasp graphic images, offer “A World of Languages,” a visual depiction of where the most-spoken mother tongues are dominant. If you’re planning to expand business abroad and want to put your college Spanish classes to good use, give it a look.