Suley,

Two good points. But as for Chinese in the mideast, just because the Chinese might be influential there, does that mean learning Chinese is any more important for us? The mideast population will still speak Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, Turkish and a few other languages, right?

In regard to the second point - agreed. I was surprised at how many people in the Balkans learned English by watching re-runs of Dallas (the old "who shot JR?" soap). Carrying on a conversation with them was easy, but it was surprising to see how much difficulty they could have interpreting. It was weird. But with your second point in mind, I can see how that might have contributed.