Although Mandarin (Chinese) tops the list of most widely spoken languages in the world...

This is really a mistaken belief. While it's true that Mandarin has the largest number of native speakers, it is not widely spoken outside of China. While English comes in fourth as a native language, as a second language, it has the widest geographic distribution and is the most commonly spoken second language of any in the world. If you check the list the clip text refers to, you'll see that the estimate for combined native and second language speakers of English is 1,500,000,000.

The Ethnologue estimate only counts native speakers, while the Encarta estimates are erratic. Would yo...

Although Mandarin (Chinese) tops the list of most widely spoken languages in the world...

This is really a mistaken belief. While it's true that Mandarin has the largest number of native speakers, it is not widely spoken outside of China. While English comes in fourth as a native language, as a second language, it has the widest geographic distribution and is the most commonly spoken second language of any in the world. If you check the list the clip text refers to, you'll see that the estimate for combined native and second language speakers of English is 1,500,000,000.

The Ethnologue estimate only counts native speakers, while the Encarta estimates are erratic. Would you trust Encarta, from the same people who gave us Windows Vista?