The foreign language that most of us can speak is not the one that most of us would like to speak. It's also not the one that most of us think would be the most useful.
That's one way of looking at the findings of a survey of Yorkshire business leaders carried out by Language is Everything, with help from CFS Europe.
We questioned 40 people at the Yorkshire International Business Convention in Bridlington on the final day of Business Week 2010. Feedback was collected by CFS using their customer feedback keypad.
Our first question was: Apart from English, in which languages can you personally have a basic conversation? The runaway winner (the answer given by 72% of respondents) was French.
However, we then asked: If you could magically be given the ability to speak any language perfectly (apart from English), which one would you choose? The clear winner here (on 35%) was Chinese Mandarin.
We followed this up with: Which language do you think will be the main language of international trade 100 years from now? Again, the clear winner was Chinese Mandarin (on 44%).
Here at Language is Everything, we've always thought that language learning should extend far beyond the 'traditional' path of French, German and Spanish. (Click here to download our 2007 booklet Which is the most useful language to learn?)