https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/35348/as-a-native...
The top 10 list is, in order, English, Mandarin, Hindustani, Spanish, Arabic, French, Malay, Russian, Bengali, and Portuguese.
English we already speak. Mandarin is primarily useful in China and not so much otherwise. Hindustani has the same problem but for India, and there's also a good amount of overlap with English there too. Spanish is the next language in the list, above Arabic and French. Incidentally I speak some French, and didn't find it that necessary for navigating the two French-speaking countries I've visited so far. English was widely spoken and understood.
And I have to point out the irony here of being accused of being US-centric when I'm talking about Spanish, and of visiting other countries where Spanish is dominant (Spain and most of South/Central America).
Not to mention the huge economic and culture importance of it in the future give that vasts amounts of culture products are produced in China.
There may be more countries speaking it, but many of those countries are practically speaking, not as important as China because they don’t produce much exported culture.
Even Korean and Japanese IMHO arguably have greater use dur to Kdrama/pop And Anime. Whereas Arabic would only be useful during tourist trips and practically speaking it’s easier for people to consume exported culture than to travel to dozens of countries.
The utility of a language is a personal thing. CydeWeys makes professional visits to Spanish speaking countries at a rate of 2x per year. That alone makes Spanish more useful than French or Arabic.
If you visit Riga with that kind of frequency, then Latvian is a far more useful language than Spanish, French or Arabic.
Countries with french as an official language only have a total population of 434 million people. And a few of them, like canada, has english as an official language as well. Also, most of the francophile countries are small former african colonies which may one day give up french as an official language and move to english or a native language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_entities_w...
French language's geographical and population reach is smaller than china's. The same applies for arabic and spanish.
> and Chinese (Mandarin) indeed largely useless outside greater China.
Which is true, but greater china accounts for a significant amount of land and people.
French, Arabic and Spanish account for 1.3 billion people. China alone has 1.4 billion people.
But this is a moot point since the french, arabs, spaniards and chinese are all desperate to learn english since english ( for the time being ) is the language of culture, science and business. I don't see chinese, french, arabic or spanish unseating english as the world's language.
That’s not happening outside of a war. It did in Rwanda because of a war where the side that eventually won spent long periods outside their home country and hated French as a symbol of the Belgians. Ditto for Algeria with the French though French is still a lingua franca so pervasive it might as well be official.
Why would an entire country that’s not undergoing a war or revolution stop speaking a language basically all educated people speak? Where is the political benefit in doing so?
Usually nationalism and self-interest. It's why england switched from norman french to english a few hundred years ago. It's also why kazahkstan switched from cryllic to latin alphabet recently and has been pushing for kazakh and english education to the detriment of russian.
> Where is the political benefit in doing so?
To get rid of their former foreign masters' language? As france's power and influence continues to wane, what incentive is there for africans to hold onto a language forced upon them by colonizers? The french language is a symbol of humiliation for a lot of african and asian countries and their elites. Especially the nationalists.
I'm not saying it will happen, but it could. Especially if france declines further and the political and financial incentive to stick to french disappears.