Re:If you're going to live in the US ... (Score 1)

Italian is only spoken in Italy and a tiny part of Switzerland.

But it opens the door to a huge historical and literary heritage. And it's quite close to spanish (see below)

Spanish only in Spain, and Spain is more of a Second World country.

...just like US and about all the EU countries...I guess the first world is meant to be on mars...

Neither will get you very far anywhere outside of those respective countries. It's not like the in the Americas -- people don't speak Spanish much in the EU -- other than tourist Spanish anyway...

Actually it's a really popular language. In EU it's the mother tongue just for spanish people, but lots of people use to learn it as a second/third language. In the rest of the world it's probably one of the most used languages...

There are more Poles than Spaniards, you'd be better off learning that than Spanish.

There can be many good reasons to learn Polish (that is understood in many eastern europe countries and believe me, this is a really good reason), but this is definitely not one of them, as native speakers are just a part of the issue.

French is widely spoken. German is widely spoken (in fact, it has the highest number of native speakers of all languages in Europe)

...and it's probably the one with less resemblances with the others, but I guess this is not important from your point of view. However German and French are quite popular languages, just like Spanish and even Italian. I think you can freely choose one and it will always be a good investment... I think you have a quite narrow view... and for sure you don't know much about Spain.