Intelligent Life has recently published a very controversial article written by Robert Lane Greene, a business correspondent for The Economist in New York, about which is the most useful global language to learn (obviously, after English).

Mandarin? China’s economy continues to grow at a pace that will make it bigger than America’s within two decades. Nevertheless, Mr. Greene thinks that Chinese won’t become a popular second language because it is too difficult. A learner of Chinese needs to know at least 3,000-4,000 characters to get the gist when reading and thousands more to understand the message properly. In addition, with its tones, it is a hard language to speak.

Spanish? It’s the second most natively spoken language in the world, the second most studied and the third most commonly used on the Internet, after English and Mandarin. This is still not the journalist’s choice.

Mr. Greene picked French. The Francophonie is an organisation which brings together 56 member states and governments that have a French-speaking heritage, which means almost one third of the world’s countries. Moreover, France attracts more tourists than any other country—76.8m in 2010, according to the World Tourism Organisation.

ABC News wrote that the top three most useful languages for business after English are Mandarin, French and Arabic, with Spanish ranking fourth.

English native speakers don’t learn foreign languages: after all English is not only the first language of some countries, but it is also the rest of the world’s second language. Nonetheless, learning a foreign language produces a cultural awareness that can be useful in business as well as in personal affairs. For example, a capable linguist makes a huge difference when negotiating.