Money Talks Endless market potential gives ESL entrepreneurs something to talk about.

You've heard all the buzzwords: global marketplace, globalnetwork, global this, global that. Yes, the world is gettingsmaller, and these days, no one blinks an eye when an Americanboasts of doing business with China, marketing a product in theUkraine or setting up shop in the land down under.

By the same token, foreigners are coming to the United States inrecord numbers to do business and study. In the 1995-96 schoolyear, 453,000 foreigners attended a U.S. college or university,compared with just 154,000 in 1974-75. And that's not countingthe hordes of business executives who traverse the Atlantic or thePacific each year to do some wheeling and dealingAmerican-style.

Sometimes the only thing standing between a foreigner and theAmerican dream is the perplexing English language, with itsfast-changing slang and impossible pronunciations. What otherlanguage has so many pronunciations for a single letter? For nativeEnglish speakers, it's no problem, but for the rest of theworld, it can be a real tongue twister.