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- Chinese language – specifically its Mandarin variety which is spoken in most of the Middle Kingdom. There are over 918 million native speakers in the world, making Mandarin their first language among the most popular languages.
- Spanish – spoken by 460 million “native speakers” around the world – apart from Spain, it is almost all of Latin America (excluding Brazil). So while we use Chinese to communicate mainly in China, Spanish will be used for communication in dozens of countries.
- English – 379 million citizens in the countries where it is an official language. However, there is no need to convince anyone that despite the third place in this ranking, it is the most useful international language, spoken by about a billion people in a second language.
- Hindi – the dominant language in the north-central part of India. About 341 million people speak it.
- Bengali – the official language of Bangladesh, a small country east of India where 160 million people live. Bengali is the first language for 228 million people, many of them from neighboring India.
- What other languages might be useful? Certainly Portuguese (spoken not only in Portugal, but also in Brazil and several other countries) or Russian, which is the lingua franca for huge areas east of Poland, up to the eastern shores of Asia.