As I said in a comment a few days ago: to speak French is to be French.

Prior to WWI, French was the language de rigeur for people in virtually every walk of life that required dealing with people not from your own country. The major exception was the sciences in which that role was played by German. Since WWI, when America's ascendancy was clearly visible, and accelerating after WWII because the Germans destroyed their scientific establishment before and during that conflict, the dominance of America's language, English, became so obvious even the most benighted denizen of the Rive Gauche could see it. Since there is no field today, other than suicide bomb making, where America is not prohibitively the predominant force, English is the dominant language in pretty much every endeavor.

French is going the way of Latin. The main reasons today to learn either language is to exponentially increase your English vocabulary, or to learn other European languages.

The author's notion that English is somehow easier to learn than French is absolutely hilarious to anyone who speaks both. The memorization required to speak English is absolutely monstrous.

He said "basic English", which probably is pretty easy to pick up. Like guitar, saxophone or piano, easy to learn to play a few tunes, pretty hard to play masterfully.

bart is right, imo. english is a polyglot of anglo-saxon, latin, greek, some french, etc. it is almost completely irregular. all the rules have exceptions. its funny how much it has changed over the years. i can just about keep up with Fielding (mid 1700's) but Chaucer ? forget about it.

here is something funny: "nostril" was formed by joining nose+hole, so i am wondering why we don't have "astril" as a word...

The thing is, you can get by with bad English. It's already so screwed up, a little more isn't fatal. But your French has to be good -- and Parisian -- or they'll refuse to understand it.

The _lingua franca_ of the 21st century is broken English.

A friend of mine in college came up to me one day and said chirpily: "I just signed up for French 101." "Why would you do that?," I asked. "So I can hate them in their own language," he replied reasonably.

cjm: On the contrary, Chancer is easily understood if you hear it -- the problem is in the reading. This stems from two factors: the archaic spelling, and the difference in vowel sounds due to the Great Vowel Shift. Spoken middle English has a lilting lyrical quality which is missing in modern English.

jdw: are there any recordings available ? i am interested in hearing a sample. supposedly the icelandic language has changed so little they can still read texts from the 1200's. guess that's a reflection on the static nature of their society.

The middle child, who had to do what her sister did, took French all the way through Middle and High School.

Her college has a 2 year requirement in a foreign language. She refused to study for her placement test at the begining of college. She was told that she had to take another year of French. Upon reflection, she decided that she hated the language so much that she would switch languages and take 2 years, rather than take another year of French.