My answer was selected to maximize communication throughout the world.

Blue — English

Red — Spanish

Green — Arabic

Yellow — Countries where > 50% of the population speaks English

Please note that I am only using countries where the languages are de facto (in law and government) and de jure (in law) so while countries such as Sweden may speak English (quite well, in fact!) they will not be represented on the map as blue English-speakers.

Now, this may appear to be a half-barren world map, but that’s the point. You can communicate with nearly all of the Americas, much of Africa, the majority of Oceania, and a significant portion of Europe.

While the macrolanguage Chinese has nearly 1 billion speakers, the majority of them are from China, so that has not made my list.

Europe and Asia are known for many languages and cultures, so I felt as if it was best to choose languages with a larger span (e.g. Spanish over Lithuanian.)

But, after all, that’s just my list.