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Mandarin, German, or French. But maybe Spanish. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

A French guy I knew thought he was pretty funny. He told a joke that went like this:

What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

Bilingual.

And what do you call a person who speaks three languages?

Trilingual.

But what do you call someone who has only learned one language?

American!

Touché. It’s true; about 80% of Americans speak only one language, according to the US Census Bureau. Compare that to 44% of Europeans who only speak one language—a majority of Europeans (56%) are at least bilingual.

But some research suggests that maybe it’s time for future generations to think differently. We'll start with a study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research and Opinion in the United Kingdom:

• They interviewed 2,000 British adults who had children under 18 years old, trying to determine how many of their children spoke languages other than English.

• Then they surveyed 500 British business leaders, asking them to predict which foreign languages they thought kids should study in order to…