Language is powerful. Beyond its direct usefulness for communication, language also conveys one’s culture, social status, and history. Acquiring language as a child is an almost thoughtless, painless process. I continue to marvel over how my father never addressed me in Greek. While Greek is not highly useful outside of that tiny nation homeland, other languages are extremely serviceable. Which one is the single most useful?
One might be inclined to simply look at the numbers illustrated in this image, suggesting that Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, or Russian would be favored. A more practical position would be based upon what language is most used in one’s day-to-day life. While Hindi, for example, is one of the most numerically favored languages, its geographic footprint it is rather small. English and Spanish, by contrast, are spoken broad swaths of the planet. Rest assured, you already speak one of the world’s most useful languages!