No I did not know the French had progressed to this extent. I guess one can call it progress. Hmmmn! come to think of it Kerry does look a little French.
No matter what you and I look like I doubt anyone can mistake McIntyre and McAdam for French unless we are traveling incognito?
au revoir,
doug
On Oct 24, 2004, at 6:34 PM, Bill McIntyre wrote:
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
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