It was a joke. Soon after followed by a serious comment.

I would agree with what you said, had the comment been completely devoid of content, but as it is, I think you're being way too harsh.

The funny thing is that once I considered learning Chinese because, at the time, I was in the middle of a hardware project where we had to deal with motherboard and other component suppliers located in China and our communications were constantly breaking down because we couldn't agree on a common subset of English.

So, if you really have to spend time with people who don't speak your first (or second, or third) language, it's always a good idea to invest some time learning their first one.

And it also shows you care.

Exactly. For maximum outsourcing utility you should learn Kannada or Tamil instead.