Nevertheless, indeed, French is a beautiful language and its importance to the world of business, politics and science needs no defence.

I think it should be pointed out though that the integrity of any language is not measured purely by the number of speakers. Like someone already mentioned above, one of the most determining factors is the amount of scientific literature published in it. French still plays a leading role in this regard.

While English may still be the most widely spoken second language, people who move in international settings know that you cannot come off as somone truly “polished” if you have no knowledge of French. Sooner or later you’ll be thrown into a situation where no matter how diverse the backgrounds and nationalities are of the people you are with, people will speak French even if they all know English.

That said, statistically speaking, it is true that Spanish is actually the language most widely spoken after Chinese in terms of the number of speakers. Spanish is also much more sophisticated of a language than most non-Spanish speakers (and even some Spanish speakers) actually give it credit. My recommendation for Americans is that they study both Spanish and French, at least, and that they throw in a third language such as Portuguese or German if they can.