French and German are still more popular to learn than Mandarin. And in the US Spanish is still the top 2nd language to learn. And it maybe a long while before Mandarin becomes more popular to learn than Spanish in the US. Now about 5 years ago they were predicting that Spanish was going to be the official language of the US in the next 50 years...that remains to be seen though....
Anyway yeah that's the truth of it. Mandarin still has a long way to go before it's a higher contender, but the truth is anyone who is learning it now and sticking with it are going to have an advantage over the ones that choose to learn it 10 years from now.
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