>>103925895german and chinese are more valuable multinational languages to have, but all languages are 2nd best to the lingua franca of english.
spanish has been codified to a standard because of don quixote. it shaped modern spanish and scholars tried to keep the language intact so that future generations could read the book. its why the spanish world speaks spanish and not every nation speaking a unique spanish like creole.
english rose to the status of lingua franca with the rise of mass communication. its remained intact and has even given millions of loan words to every language because they didn't have a word for new technologies like "internet".
french on the hand was spread through resource extracting coloniaztion. the french didn't permanently set up living colonies in africa, they just set up military bases and ruled over the people. places like haiti weren't french citizens coming to a new land to start a new life, it was a whole island wide slave plantation with only a few french overseers. because this was the wa french spread it just created a bunch of creoles and pidgens instead of a global network of language. it was only the lingua franca because all leaders spoke it, making the language of diplomacy. but the languag eof diplomacy has been english for decades and it weird to even have an international meeting in french. even if the UK leaves the EU, the EU will still use primarily english in their meetings.
