I once formulated my "list of languages that would enable you to talk with any educated (secondary education) person":
English, Mandarin, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Swahili, Japanese
To some degree, this is not a ranking. E.g., German doesn't make the cut because though German is widely spoken through central Europe, almost all of them know other languages. Whereas French and Spanish are widely used through their former empires on other continents.
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Date: 2012-06-01 02:49 pm (UTC)English, Mandarin, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Swahili, Japanese
To some degree, this is not a ranking. E.g., German doesn't make the cut because though German is widely spoken through central Europe, almost all of them know other languages. Whereas French and Spanish are widely used through their former empires on other continents.