Just came across a blog post considering six widespread world languages to learn.
From Blog Post
There is debate about which languages to learn, these six would be a good start of the 6812 or so languages out there to be annoyed you cannot understand.
I really need to stop reading the Wikipedia.org online Encyclopedia as it is amazing how little I know about the plant earth. Yesterday, I was all excited browsing around on the Francophone page and thinking about Anglophone and Anglosphere and all sorts of fun maps and things, when I ran across what the United Nations considers the Six Official Languages