Which is the best language to learn?
In the fourth in our series of Big Questions, we invited six writers to make the case for the language they thought most worth learning. The Economist's Robert Lane Greene introduces the series. He's well qualified to do so. Our editor asked him how many languages he spoke. "Six," he said, "and I'm conversant with another three." As he points out, if you've read this far, you already know the most useful global language. If you were to learn one other, he recommends French.
Over the next couple of weeks we will be publishing online the arguments made by the other five contributors. But voting starts now. Perhaps you will agree with Daniel Franklin, The Economist's executive and business editor, that after English, Spanish is the most-used international language, or with Simon Long, The Economist's Banyan columnist, that learning Chinese makes the best economic and political sense. Or maybe you will be persuaded by Josie Delap, who is Middle East and Africa editor for The Economist online, of the beauties of Arabic. Helen Joyce, the magazine's São Paulo correspondent, argues that Brazilian Portuguese is the one rational choice and our own editor, Tim de Lisle, says Latin should win out because it has been indirectly useful every day of his career.
Have your say by voting in the poll below. Or if you think there's a case to be made for Urdu, Danish, Swahili, Italian, Russian or any of the other 6,900 languages in the world, please tell us why.
Update: this poll is now closed. For the results, see The Best Language Surprise.
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quote It's often seemed to me that Shakespeare might well have been a simply brilliant editor as well as a beyond-extraordinary writer