[petodo]

> That may be the real issue here. Mandarin has nearly as many speakers as English.

Completely different league, English has by magnitude more speakers than Chinese.

> Why should anyone be interested in people who don't "learn at least" Mandarin?

Because not learning any foreign language is quite sign of ignorant character, while English is foreign language in most of the world and most of the world English speakers are non natives including me who learned 2-3 foreign languages besides my mother tongue. But you are right Chinese not speaking any other language besides Chinese is less ignorant than me...

[tsukikage]

> Completely different league, English has by magnitude more speakers than Chinese.

That's an incredible claim. Got a reference for it? Wikipedia reckons 1.5bn English vs 1.1 bn Chinese.

[ubercore]

Those numbers are native or second language. I bet the English numbers shoot way up vs Mandarin if you drop the bar to basic language skills or holding limited conversations.