Re: travel

You might have a point. But there are many factors combining for English hegemony in second-language learning.

However, Western Europeans have, since 1945, been under the USA umbrella, and their better chance at work or business (NOT to vacation) outside Europe was in the USA and other Anglosphere countries. So it sounds probable that they learn English because of that. But like Sancho said, most educated Europeans are fluent in several languages, not only in English (helped by the fact that the large European language families are mutually easy to learn: a Dutch can easily learn German, a Spaniard can easily learn Italian). That means that English, among several European languages, wouldn't be too illogical a choice. Chinese, in contrast, has only increased in importance since the 1908s opening of mainland China.

English has also received all the more attention precisely because Americans (and Brits) tend to be English monolingual. Everywhere there is a large American presence, it becomes more desirable to learn English. You have a better chance of that than of Americans learning your language beyond the basics. There is also the factor of American (or rather, Hollywood) pop-culture being known and diffused in all the world: obviously the movies and songs carry English to non-Anglo lands. No other country has enjoyed such diffusion in the post-WW2 era, despite French snobbery and the explosion in Japanese manga/anime. Of course, you also have that some large and important countries had English imposed by a colonial master and now use it for their international relations even if using another language at home: South Africa (and remember English there was an imposition not just on the Blacks, but also on the Afrikaaners), the former British India, the Philippines, Nigeria

Finally, you mustn't forget that English is, overall, a particularly easy language for learning as a non-native. Chinese grammar is even simpler, but it more than offsets this advantage with its complicated pronunciation and writing. No other European language has a simpler grammar than English, and while "good" English is a little hard to pronounce, it is not as hard as some other European languages, and it isn't that hard to understand a foreign accent either, even to another non-native. Other Asian languages also have disadvantages: most continental languages are tonal like Chinese; Indian languages, Japanese and Korean have a complicated grammar; Austronesian languages are not global enough

The Language Question in France is indeed a complicated one. Most French are particularly proud of the French language; yet they are also embarrassed that their English is bad by European standards. They try to reconcile these conflicting pressures. But, funnily, they see no problem with saying "week-end" where most Outre-Mer French-speakers would say "fin de semaine". For a people with such a complex relation with England and her language, they adopt her words with amazing ease (this happens, btw, in all the languages that exist both in Europe and in the former colonies: "colonials" tend to adopt less English words than "metropolitans")