French

French is the language of diplomacy, cuisine, fashion and a third of Africa — over 300 million speakers across France, Belgium, Switzerland, Québec, and an arc of West and Central African nations where it remains the lingua franca of business and education. UNESCO projects it will pass 700 million speakers by 2050, almost entirely on the back of African demographic growth, making it one of the most strategically useful languages on earth.

For English speakers, French rewards patience. The pronunciation is the steepest hill — silent letters, nasal vowels, the famous French 'r' — but once your ear adjusts, the vocabulary feels almost familiar (English absorbed thousands of French words after the Norman conquest, so 'restaurant', 'décor' and 'rendezvous' are gimmes). The grammar is logical, the literature is one of the most influential in the world, and the cultural canon — from Truffaut to Daft Punk — runs deep enough to pull you through the long middle stretch of any language journey.