[fighting]

Yes, currently Chinese is the main alternative with the most population and has some of the features I mentioned. It is also great for business with many people learning it to attract some of the chinese money floating around and lots of foreigners there to make their fortunes. But just a couple of decades ago it was russian. A major war between the US and China and it might be Hindi next. Never safe to predict the future.

[douche]

Chinese has a really awful written form, as far as being something that people can learn to read and write in a short amount of time.

[seanmcdirmid]

And before that Japanese.

[cm2187]

I can safely predict that Chinese will not be used as the common language for Europe...