One of the things most people seem not to realise is that many countries have more than just one national or official language.

Switzerland, one of the most developed, richest and most peace-loving countries in the world has four official languages Romansh, German, Italian and French. Other examples are Canada, Finland and Belgium all which have multiple official languages.

Note also that a fairly large percentage of Europeans are fluent with at least one or several other European languages, in addition to their respective mother tongues.

Interestingly however, there is one exception, which is the British (or the English to be more precise). By and large, the English speaks only English and nothing else (tourist-level ability not counted).

Our concept of national unity through a single language, therefore, is arguably very much influenced by our colonial past.

Beyond this, I would have thought the answer for Malaysia is really quite straight forward. All Malaysians should be encouraged and given the opportunity to be completely fluent in all the main languages of Malaysia - Malay, Chinese, Tamil and English. And there's a really good reason for this.

Chinese gives you access to literally the entire population of China which is 1.3 billion. Malay would provide you access to Indonesia with its population of 240 million. And Tamil is spoken by an estimated 70 million people in southern India.

Add up all the numbers and you get 1.6 billion which is 25 percent of the world's population. The significance of this is that this 25 percent comes from fastest growing economies in the world in the coming decades.

Malaysia, by fluke rather than design, and assuming that it takes the right steps now, is uniquely poised to produce citizens that will have the ability to speak these major Asian languages in addition to English.

This ability, I believe, is the competitive advantage that will become the hallmark of the next generation of world-class entrepreneurs.