By Aaron Rockwell, Staff Wizard
I woke up thinking about whether I wanted to go to China and learn Mandarin this summer or learn another language. To assess the pros of all the languages, I compiled all the first listed language data from The World Factbook, along with Population, Landmass, and GDP numbers from Wikipedia.
If you want to learn a language solely based on the number of speakers:
| Rank | Language | Sum of Population in Millions |
| 1 | Mandarin | 1,410 |
| 2 | Hindi | 1,310 |
| 3 | English | 780 |
| 4 | Spanish | 403 |
| 5 | Arabic | 384 |
| 6 | French | 313 |
| 7 | Malay | 292 |
| 8 | Portuguese | 243 |
| 9 | Punjabi | 195 |
| 10 | Bangla | 162 |
If you want to learn a language solely based on the landmass covered by the number of speakers:
| Rank | Language | Sum of Landmass in Thousands (km2) |
| 1 | English | 28,662 |
| 2 | Russian | 16,581 |
| 3 | Spanish | 11,209 |
| 4 | Arabic | 10,587 |
| 5 | Portuguese | 9,799 |
| 6 | French | 9,389 |
| 7 | Mandarin | 9,359 |
| 8 | Hindi | 2,864 |
| 9 | Kazakh | 2,700 |
| 10 | Greenlandic | 2,166 |
Since Russia has such a huge land-space, it makes sense that they would be boosted to a number two slot.
If you want to learn a language solely based on the GDP per capita by the number of speakers:
| Rank | Language | GDP per Capita ($) |
| 1 | Luxembourgish | $105,838 |
| 2 | Bokmal (Norwegian) | $71,641 |
| 3 | Icelandic | $57,593 |
| 4 | Danish | $52,662 |
| 5 | Swedish | $51,799 |
| 6 | German | $45,733 |
| 7 | Finnish | $43,462 |
| 8 | Dutch | $42,954 |
| 9 | Japanese | $37,270 |
| 10 | Hebrew | $36,122 |
If you want to learn a language solely based on the total GDP by the number of speakers:
| Rank | Language | Sum of GDP in Billions ($) |
| 1 | English | $25,070 |
| 2 | Mandarin | $12,207 |
| 3 | Japanese | $4,730 |
| 4 | German | $4,545 |
| 5 | Spanish | $3,271 |
| 6 | French | $2,644 |
| 7 | Arabic | $2,459 |
| 8 | Hindi | $2,251 |
| 9 | Portuguese | $2,069 |
| 10 | Italian | $1,854 |
Finally, if you want to learn a language based on the above four rankings:
| Rank | Language | Rank of Sum of Population | Rank of Sum of Landmass | Rank of Sum of GDP | Rank of GDP per Capita | Total |
| 1 | English | 3 | 1 | 1 | 11 | 16 |
| 2 | Mandarin | 1 | 7 | 2 | 32 | 42 |
| 3 | Spanish | 4 | 3 | 5 | 36 | 48 |
| 4 | French | 6 | 6 | 6 | 34 | 52 |
| 5 | German | 15 | 28 | 4 | 6 | 53 |
| 6 | Portuguese | 8 | 5 | 9 | 33 | 55 |
| 7 | Arabic | 5 | 4 | 7 | 40 | 56 |
| 8 | Japanese | 12 | 34 | 3 | 9 | 58 |
| 9 | Russian | 11 | 2 | 12 | 35 | 60 |
| 10 | Castilian | 24 | 27 | 13 | 14 | 78 |
This chart shows why English is such a desired language in the world. It also gives me confidence in learning Mandarin (which generally takes 2200 hours of study to become comprehensive for native English speakers).
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