[nickcarraway]

Why is French above German?

[mamelukesabre]

Easy.

Where on the planet do you find native german speakers? germany, austria, and just a few other places near germany.
That’s it. Nowhere else. Sure there are minority enclaves in various places but they are insignificant.

Now french...

Canada
various islands in the carribean
various islands all around the world
one tiny country in south america
parts of north africa
parts of west africa
france of course
belgium
luxembourg

French beats german easily.

[RitchieAprile]

French is the language of diplomacy and also of seduction.

Could you imagine attempting a seduction of a woman in German? Even a German one would prefer French..

[Cronos]

My experience is that with standard German you can use in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and get by in the Netherlands, but most of those countries speak English as well. French is useful not only in France (where they’ll refuse to speak English), but also Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, West Africa etc. and it was also the preferred second language for most of the world until the internet age..

[LonePalm]

Why is French above German?

Perhaps because a larger percentage of words in English come from French than German. I learned more about English while studying French than I did in English class.

While English is considered a West Germanic language, it was heavily influenced by Norman French.

French - 29%, Latin - 29%, Germanic Languages - 26%, Greek - 6%, Other Languages - 6%, and proper names - 4%

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[mamelukesabre]

I found this on wiki...

1. Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
2. English (480 million)
3. Spanish (320 million)
4. Russian (285 million)
5. French (270 million)
6. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
7. Portuguese (248 million)
8. Arabic (221 million)
9. Bengali (185 million)
10. Japanese (133 million)
11. Punjabi (130 million)
12. German (100 million)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

The number for english seems a little low to me.
add all the native speakers in the world from:
USA
canada
UK
autralia
new zealand
south africa
israel
various tiny and island nations

plus all the other people in the world who speak english as a second language and you only get 480M?? I don’t know about that.