Whilst I can order beer in a number of european languages I'm "strictly english" after that.

I find this a matter of embarrassment on holidays in that I am forced to hope that people in other countries have taken the time and effort to learn my language when I clearly haven't done that same for anyon else. I could blame my education given that I had to choose between German or Biology, Latin or Chemistry. sciences 2 languages nil but we still had to do French and my French is still total merde.

Of course having recently had justifiable excuses to holiday in Australia and Florida it's still a bit of a shock to find that the mother tongue has taken a bit of a bashing. There were still times when I had no idea what people were talking about even though it sounded like english most of the time!

On serious note I have nothing but admiration for those who post here in their non-native tongue.