Would you like a side of Mandarin with that?

In 8 weeks I will be taking a language exam in order to gain enterance to the University here. Although I am growing to really enjoy German, after studying it every day for a year I am looking forward to the time when I can start on a new language. Following are some stats I was looking at to whet my appetite.

Most Widely Spoken Languages
if you add the secondary speaker populations to the primary speaker populations, you get the following list: (number of speakers; number of countries where it's spoken)
1. Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion; 5)
2. English (480 million; 115)
3. Spanish (320 million; 20)
4. Russian (285 million; 16)
5. French (265 million; 35)
6. Hindi/Urdu (250 million; 2)
7. Arabic (221 million; 24)
8. Portuguese (188 million; 5)
9. Bengali (185 million; 1)
10. Japanese (133 million; 1)
11. German (109 million; 9)

After weighing six factors (number of primary speakers, number of secondary speakers, number and population of countries where used, number of major fields using the language internationally, economic power of countries using the languages, and socio-literary prestige), Weber compiled the following list of the world's ten most influential languages:(number of points given in parentheses)
1. English (37)
2. French (23)
3. Spanish (20)
4. Russian (16)
5. Arabic (14)
6. Chinese (13)
7. German (12)
8. Japanese (10)
9. Portuguese (10)
10. Hindi/Urdu (9)

(taken from http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm)