Measuring the utility of a language by number of countries in which it is spoken, or number of speakers worldwide is pretty meaningless. It's not dissimilar to

Measuring the utility of a language by number of countries in which it is spoken, or number of speakers worldwide is pretty meaningless. It's not dissimilar to the argument that children in SE England should all learn French because most of the ferries go to Calais and Boulogne - planes go everywhere. The utility of a language is a personal thing. CydeWeys makes professional visits to Spanish speaking countries at a rate of 2x per year. That alone makes Spanish more useful than French or Arabic. If you visit Riga with that kind of frequency, then Latvian is a far more useful language than Spanish, French or Arabic.