No offence taken, Betty Ann, but it is true that most anglo-saxons (let's
leave the Canadians out of this :-)) tend to think that everyone else
should speak their language. From what's happening over there, perhaps you
lot should start to learn Spanish....<v.b.g.>
:) When I was a kid of 8, and doing too well at school (possibility of my getting bored, and into mischief), my Mother offered me a choice of after-school "entertainment": either I was gonna take piano lessons, or language ones. Since most of my little friends were "doing" piano and hated it, I opted for language. I then chose English -- swimming upstream as usual, since French and German were the two languages of choice (Russian being taught willy-nilly <g>). I was asked -- time and again -- why I chose to learn that, rather than anything else (if neither French or German, at least Latin?). I used to respond -- with the supreme self-confidence children have -- that that was the language most people spoke (quoting UK, US, Canada, OZ, South Africa)... Until someone said: that's not true; *Chinese* is the most common language; *and* they're multiplying like rabbits, so, by the time you're 30, you'll *need* to know it to survive.. :)
Of course, I never dared admit the *real* (but not serious enough) reason I wanted to learn English -- the best rock-and-roll songs were written in it, and I wanted to know what they said... :)
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Tamara P Duvall
Lexington, Virginia, USA
Formerly of Warsaw, Poland
http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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