Just thought it can be interesting for someone. I've recently found an interesting research about most used languages for communication. Authors consider amount of translated books, from and to a particular language and built a connected graph diagram. Some short review is published [url=http://news.sciencemag.org/social-sciences/2014/12/want-influence-world-map-reveals-best-languages-speak]here[/url] (hope, PNAS won't be interpreted as adv).
I'm faced difficulties with looking for english-speaking penpal. There are many unanswered requests from my countrymen here in the Net withal, and I found it as a dramatical confirmation of degrading russian cultural attractiveness. I am not an ethnic russian, so during my life I observe this culture a bit outside and now found this fact is woeful. This research inspired me as it points out that russian tongue is really in «halo» and still can represent a particular interest for someone who looking for supplementary meanings of expression.
One can also be glad to see that those beautiful languages of romanian group demonstrates wide spreading, quantitatively similar to English. But can we igore the fact that some other tongues embracing some restless countries are still uncovered? Progressive ideas can be spread among people only by using appropriate meanings of expression. And we still have them too few, as we can see within this diagram.