INC – Melanie Curtin 
If you’re looking to expand your linguistic horizons while simultaneously setting yourself up for professional success, there’s one language that vastly outpaces the rest in terms of its utility. As Emily Oster, associate professor of economics at Brown University, says, “Mandarin would be the best choice.” “This is the native language for 14 percent of the world’s population,” she explains, “and most of those people do not speak English, so it’s all a win.” It’s definitely a win, considering over one billion people speak it worldwide already, and China is slated to become the number one economic power on the planet by 2020. (more)