If language is a way of experiencing the world, how is the world a reflection of language? The three categories have challenged what I thought I knew about the world. Twenty years ago I was studying Classical Latin in high school, only because I thought it was odd and a rare opportunity. Who would have ever thought that it's still being taught. At that time, the conventional cold war wisdom was that American students ought to learn Russian. If the same motivations then applied today, why is not Arabic on the list. We might look to the other two lists for some information. Of the top ten spoken languages, it is split evenly between European and non-European. Factoring in colonialization, at least half of the world's largest nations have been colonial subjects at some point in their history  and very few on the list have been major colonizers (although some on the list have been both colonizers and colonized, China for example). Of the major European colonizers: Great Britain, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, France, none make the largest nations list. In fact, surpassing Germany in the last several years, Vietnam is now larger than every European nation.