What is the most important language in the world?

I think all languages are important to the people who speak them... they are such a big part of their culture. If you take away someones language you take away part of who they are.

chinese z most widely spoken language its not most imp language nd most imp lang iz ENGLISH even to ask this question u used english now say.......

Chinese??? You've got to be joking. English is the de facto world language.

granted there are alot of Chinese people which throws off the statistics, especially considering that the majority of Chinese only know one language. however, we are communicating in English are we not? its not a strong argument, but its futile to try and discuss what will happen next in terms of language. people choose language based on influence and the English speaking world is very influential. another important thing to acknowledge is the aged nature of the Chinese language. society has grown past the use of image symbols and have advanced into phonetically characters. Chinese is behind the times.

English is the most important language. Its use widely around the world.

Of course English. For non-Chinese, Chinese character is tooooooo difficult, Also it's hard to learn 4 tones. For me, English is diffult, too, but it is better than Chinese.

Linguistically and culturally speaking all languages and dialects are equally important and we should cherish each and every one. I do not think Mandarin Chinese will become THE world language because it is not widely spread around the world. Its speech community is mostly centered in China. However it will increase in its important for trade and commerce. You can see many Chinese-studies departments opening up all across universities in Europe. At the moment for science, entertainment, commerce and technology (...etc) English is the world language. It is not omnipresent but it is still extremely hard to avoid. Personally I believe languages such as English, Mandarin and Spanish will grow in importantance as regards trade. That's why we need to protect all the other thousands of languages so we don't lose them. In the end language loss and language homogenisation is ACTUALLY bad for progress because when we loose a language we loose all the accumulated knowledge that the language's speech community has acquired over the hundred or thousands of years. English has been enriched by borrowing terms from other languages. When those languages are gone the language will not be able to borrow any more. For example just look at the pharamacutical industry. Every week we learn more about our natural world and how we can harness it for the betterment of medical treatments. We get this knowledge directly or indirectly from tribal cultural who have made use of this knowledge for thousands of years.

I'd have to say English, though Chinese and Spanish are definitely up there.

It's English, hands down. Even though Chinese is more widely spoken it will be decades before the number of international "players" in business from China rival the number from the United States.