Ok, I'll bite :) - but just for the sake of argument.

Not to be too picky, but you could also parse that as "a lot more people in the world"

The reference that anonymonk cited, places english (as first language) in 341 millions and spanish (again, as first language) in 322 to 358 millions. Here, I take this as a "could", although I tend to believe the real total is closer to the second number. (I may be biased since spanish is my first tongue). This would place me in agreement with the quoted opinion.

Also, with ~50 million of school-going USA citizens (source), many of them getting spanish classes because of this, the difference in the second language category seems blurrier.

Because of this, I'll keep my parser as it is, because with the current conditions, I'll most definitely be right within 2 to 3 years (assuming I'm not right today). OTOH, we should all be learning chinese :)