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Why is Mandarin so high? It's practically useless outside of China and even there, there are very many dialects so not all Chinese people understand Mandarin. Also, why is Portuguese lower than Japanese? Or Arabic higher than German?
Basically all people under 60 years old in China understand Mandarin well. Even ethnic minorities must learn Mandarin in school.
Portuguese might be slightly behind...it's basically just Brazil and Portugal. Brazil's rise might be exaggerated, but it will certainly still be a major player.
Portuguese is the third language in Africa, only English and French are more important.
I think, of the 10...I would only categorize Hindi and Bengali as somewhat useless, outside of any interest in Bollywood or actually living in India. Because even in those countries, English is the language of choice for business, and preferred by the elite, as India is a multilingual nation with too much ethnic tension for Hindi to be the predominant language. I think there are similar issues in different countries in Africa.
For the record Urdu and Hindi they are basically the same language except for the script. Both languages have been suffering for years in their respective countries, however with Nawaz Sharif pushing urdu and Modi pushing hindi it may experience a resurgence. In addition India might become the world's biggest economy in 50 years. If we will see a powershift to the indian subcontinent, who knows? It might become similar in strength as mandarin. So interesting times are ahead.
Depends on you and what you're doing with your life. For an Indian person, Hindi is probably really important or otherwise they wouldn't be able to speak with their family etc. Pretty stupid question to be honest.
The question is about the least useful language in the world as a whole, not individually.
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