Do you think Chinese will be the top 1 language? Can you speak Chinese?

well, i mean Mandarin by saying "Chinese", coz, you know, mandarin and cantonese are quite different in sound, but absolutely not in word spelling, i mean, the chinese character spelling. lol

Indeed. As far as I understand it, the Chinese character set is universal. Someone speaking Mandarin could pick up a Chinese newspaper and understand it as well as someone who only spoke Cantonese. Or indeed, as well as someone from 2,000 years ago. It's the spoken bits which are tricky;)

yeah, and you know, even in English, we have so many dialects and varieties and accents, such as UK and USA people speak in quite different sound, but a similar spelling system. even in one country, say, UK, people from different villages or shires may feel difficult to identify the accent of a different one. lol

As an Englishman living in the Midwest, I totally sympathise with that;)

I am a chinese. I live in Shanghai we speak Mandarin and Shanghainese. I speak Shanghainese to my faimly and Mandarin to others like classmate, friends etc. However, I mostly speak Mandarin now after enter the university.Because my classmates come from everywhere in China.

i can't say any nation can rule the world, China may become a superpower, but will never be a hegemonic country. if you wanna learn Chinese, the best way is to come to China and personally experience the city and coutry life of current China, or you can sign up as a skype member, there are so many Chinese that teach freigners Chinese, they are good language trainers and teachers, plus, I can speak but type here, a language can't be learnt without listening and speaking or we can only the "dumb" language