I am a firm believer that people who want to communicate invariably will.
That doesn't allow disrespect for the language and politeness towards the 'host' country I am visiting.
Assuming English is your first or a good second language, statistically, based on numbers of speakers in the World, the numbers tell you should concentrate on Chinese. Then possibly Spanish. Russian is widely spoken, particulaly in former USSR countries (and Israel), but probably not so much in South America.
Much depends on where you want to travel and their own first and second languages.
The most important thing is to understand their alphabet and have a few introductory and politeness phrases in their language. Other than that, as I said, people who want to communicate invariably will.
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