Speaking so as to be heard

One of my great goals when I was growing up was to be able to speak at least the second language of everyone I was likely to meet. This is a valid and highly laudable goal for a Canadian, but it quickly spins into difficulties if you live in a metropolitan area.

And then I compounded my troubles by spending several years in the Canadian Arctic, where I learned and used Inuktitut and Cree. They are wonderful languages, but they don't travel all that well unless (as Rebekah and I are known to do) you want to discuss something in a Muenster restaurant with a fair degree of confidence that other diners will not know what you are saying.

I live right now north of Boston, and my English, French, and Spanish would seem likely to cover most of the people I run into.  But I didn't realize until I moved there that Lowell, MA, is 20% Cambodian.

I have tried learning Khmer. I got several chapters along, so I could thank shop clerks and so on. And then I met the chapter that laid out the 29 ways you can say "you" in Khmer, and how deploying the right word is important to respect the other person's years/status/relationship to you. I have not gone further.

Oh, and did I mention that the building we live in is about 20% folks from Brazil? I just learned today that Portuguese is in the top 10 of world languages:

1. Mandarin (over a billion speakers)
2. English (about a billion)
3. Spanish (500 million)
4. Hindi (490)
5. Russian (277)
6. Arabic (255)
7. Portuguese (240)
8. Bengali (215)
9. French (200)
10. Malay / Indonesian (175)

 As a kid, I figured that the imperialist languages were the ones to follow, as they would have left speakers of their languages in all their former colonies. Works great for English and Spanish.

What now? I guess the sensible next-language decision these days would be the next biggest trade/commerce/Internet language that I don't now have. So if I'm being sensible, it's off to Mandarin lessons...