I think we should all learn to speak Mandarin
/gary
tl;dr
This might not be too far fetched a comment given the current state of the art. Who is to say that the computers of the future wont be based on cartographic and pictographic languages like a Kanji character set over the idiographic scripts used today. Quantum computing factors may even demand this.
When I lived downtown, in early 2000, I made extra money by helping UofT students connect the 386's they could purchase for $40 to the UofT dialup network. I'd tune the systems irq's, etc, usually to avoid sound system conflicts and help them setup Pine so they could check mail from home. Typically these students were in academic disciplines not EE or CompSci.
One of my neighbours however was a Phd candidate in Comp Sci from China. He spoke excellent English and was quite interesting to talk to. He was a state sponsored candidate and the Chinese Govt. paid his tuition and gave him a small living allowance. One day he asked me a question that he said was topmost in the mind of the Chinese bureaucracy at the time.
He asked why North America was hiring so many programmers from India and few if any from China. I explained the issue of India's former Colonial rule and that there were a great number of Indian citizens who were fluent English speakers. He said yes but, he'd seen some of the code and that it was excessively verbose and that Chinese programmers were trained to write as compact code as possible.
I pointed out that interpretive software sets were on the rise and that compiled applications for workflow were on the wain, in principle if not in general at the time. I also said that no matter how well code is commented and for longevity's sake; a programmer has to understand certain idiomatic constructs of spoken languages which may be somewhat restated in the way the interpretation of commonly used code may be assumed in the future by a native, or at least a highly exposed to English speaker.
He was a very nice fellow, took what I said to heart and he gave me a small gift when he returned to China. I had given him and his friends an apple pie I made once and that was his thanks for being a good neighbour.