Chic factor

You can't deny that there's some chic in speaking foreign languages. Ooops, did I use a french word ? You got it, even when they speak english, people love to add some foreign words because it's smart to do so. So if you decide to take russian because that will set you apart from the rest, you'd better be clear about it because in the long run, it's not such a big motivating factor for a difficult language.
It is actually fun to see what is chic in some countries. I was at the Fiera in Milan one day (I did not speak italian at that time) and at an exposition I gave a list of the languages I spoke to the export manager so that he could find me someone I could understand. As usually we did those things in english, I was very surprised when a small man came out shining with pride, saying he spoke tedesco (german). He actually did, and as I learned later, he was part of the 3% italians who do and thus could boast with some reason. This was especially funny for a french speaking Swiss like me, for which learning german had the same level of difficulty but was something you excepted from an educated person. Well, so much for the transnational relativity of chic, but for Western European and Americans, chich languages normally include french, german, russian, chinese and most of the exotic languages.