THERE is only one tongue, and it is English. But many of our continental cousins simply refuse to speak correctly. Which of our neighbours are letting us and themselves down?
French
Just over the Channel so have no excuse. It’s sheer pigheadedness preventing them from stringing a sentence together. Less shagging, more grammar and you might get your tongue wrapped around a proper language, not your moody sister-in-law’s tit. You might as well give up on French, you haven’t even got Gerard Depardieu anymore.
Italians
Helped by fully half their language being expansive non-verbal gestures, the Italians do okay because their Mafia, football managers and gelato merchants need English to rip us off. Order a coffee, however, and you’ll learn they have nineteen different words for it and at least four of those are inappropriate to order at that time of day.
Spanish
The British Empire, gone? One look at Benidorm proves otherwise. The Costa del Sol is a vast colonial undertaking, designed to force the Spanish to learn English and accept that both fried breakfasts and pints of lager can be served at any time of the day. It’s worked. Even when they tell us to go f**k ourselves, they do so perfectly.
Germans
Annoyingly good, which is some compensation for all that nasty business in the first half of the 20th century. Ideally German would have been banned in 1945, but too late now. Meet them halfway by saying ‘Zwei Bier, bitte’ to a barmaid who can fully understand Shakespeare in English though you only know the numbers thanks to Kraftwerk.
Dutch
The masters of non-native English speaking. The French should be ashamed, and not just over this. The Dutch demonstrate such grasp of the subtleties that one wonders what they could have achieved if they’d ever thought about anything other than bicycles, waffles and weed.
Poles
Excellent. Better than most British people. And they look like us. They could be here, among us, now, undetected, waiting to strike.
