Language	Difficulty  (1 to 5)	Popularity   # learners	Family	GDP  (USD billions)	Speakers  (millions)
	Esperanto			Artificial	$0 bn	2 M
	If you want to try an artificial language, Esperanto is the most famous and most widespread. Read the contribution sent by Mark Bailey.
	Thai			Tai-Kadai	$143 bn	50 M
	Very difficult language but definitely a great country.
	Finnish			Altaic:Baltic-Finnic	$161 bn	5 M
	Probably the most difficult European language to be learned, but rather fascinating.
	Turkish			Altaic:Turkic	$237 bn	70 M
	A wonderful grammar and a great civilization all clad in the roman alphabet should be enough to convince you.
	Russian			Eastern Slavic	$433 bn	290 M
	This fascinating language is much less difficult to learn than its reputation.
	Korean			Altaic:Korean	$605 bn	71 M
	Very interesting language and a great country but one of the most difficult language to speak fluently.
	Portuguese			Romance	$654 bn	160 M
	Easy language for those who already speak another romance language, Portuguese is not the first choice in this group unless you have a special reason.
	Mandarin			Sino-Tibetan	$986 bn	1,000 M
	The most difficult language you can learn - but one of the most powerful.
	Italian			Romance	$1490 bn	65 M
	Arguably the most beautiful spoken language there is, a must for the arts aficionado.
	Spanish			Romance	$2071 bn	250 M
	Easy, logical and useful language that is on top of most people's list.
	French			Romance	$2116 bn	130 M
	A very chic but difficult romance language, French will open you the door of the most visited country on earth and let you in to a fascinating culture.
	German			West Germanic	$2850 bn	100 M
	Important European language, quite difficult to learn.
	English			West Germanic	$14129 bn	600 M
	The undisputed king of languages in science, business and international exchange of any kind. The first language one should learn.

Definitions:

• Difficulty : Rating 1 (easiest) to 5 (hardest) of the difficulty of learning the language for an English speaker. Many additional factors will affect the difficulty you will experience when trying to learn a given language, especially the other languages you already speak.
• Popularity : Simple rating of how popular the language is with learners. You will find a lot of learning material for popular languages.
• GDP : Nominal GDP of the countries where the languages is spoken. This gives an indication of the economic importance of the language on the international scene. We have not used PPP GDP as it emphasizes non-tradable goods. When a country uses several languages we used the percentage of speakers of the language multiplied by the country's GDP.
• Speakers : Approximate number of native speakers worldwide.

If you think a language should be included, you can write a review for a language. Just send me a blueprint and I'll publish it in the next edition.