Doug McAdam wrote: >Course as usual >most Americans want it to be their brand of English and in many ways >English is becoming the universal language, at least in science it >seems to be.
Do you want to be amazed, as I was, at how universal English has become? Ten years ago my wife and I rode our bicycles for three weeks though Provence. You have probably heard all the horror stories about how nasty the French are to tourists who don't speak fluent Frence, and of course we didn't find that to be true at all. But what blew me away was what happened when we were in the cab on the way to the Nice airport to leave for home, and the driver asked, in perfect English, how the trip had been. I replied that it was wonderful, but that I felt bad about my limited French because being fluent would have made it even better. His reply was "Well French isn't really a very useful language anyway. With the EU, everyone has to know English." You could have knocked me over with a feather, because that certainly didn't fit the popular conception of French attitudes. OK, I know this had nothing to do with special characters, but the list has been slow, so I hope it didn't overload anyone, and I didn't say a word about whether or not the French were perfidious about our just war or whether or not Kerry "looks French":-) Bill ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
