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In Europe, probably English. [1] Anywhere else: Arabic (Mid East/Africa), Chinese (Asia), Spanish (South America). [1]: https://www.economist.com/news/europe/

• JBlue42 9y ago
  Yes, exactly.
• girzel 9y ago
  Not true for Asia. Perhaps some smaller South-East Asian countries have seen the writing on the wall and started learning Chinese, but for the most part the defining characteristic of Asian countries is that they each pretend they are the only Asian country.
  • seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    English gets you pretty far outside of china. If there is one language you need to know as a tourist, English is it.
• dasil003 9y ago
  Only half of South America speaks Spanish.
  • baud147258 9y ago
    What does the other half speaks? Brasilian/Portuguese or something else?
    • abrowne 9y ago
      Yes, Portuguese. Population of South America: 421M¹ Population of Brazil: 208M² 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_America 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil
• barry-cotter 9y ago
  For Africa either English or French, probably one of each, for the Middle East either French or English, French for former French colonies, English for the Gulf because all the IT people are from the Indian subcontinent, maybe Arabic for Egypt and the Levant but probably English too. Educated Arabic speakers have to learn one of English or French to be anywhere near state of the art in anything. More books are translated into Dutch every year than into Arabic.