Hi Steve,

Surely it's no surprise that many Brussels politicians still communicate with each other in English? How many Finns speak Portuguese? How many Poles understand Dutch?

Consider also the Eurovision Song Contest: how many of the performers who choose not to sing in their native languages use anything other than English as an alternative? (This is not because they love us - they just want to sell more records.)

And by the bye, I suspect that representatives of the smaller EU nations would oppose any attempt to impose French(or German)as the standard medium of communication between speakers whose native languages are unintelligible to each other. Much too dangerous politically!

Indeed, our current (and - I hope - temporary) absence from that forum could make the English language even more attractive to all those who feel anxious about the possibility of future French (or German) domination of it.


Wassail!