it has, for some reason, always been important for children of a school age, or if you like children, to learn at least one of the languages which are, incidentally look you see, spoken across mainland Europe. after considering the matter, and indeed after taking on board certain legal ramifications of electing to challenge this, i have agreed to abide by the decision to allow this happen in respect of my own children.
French is the language of choice across certain areas of the world, and so this is the language which my children are, with my outstanding yet modest help, learning. for a great many practical reasons it does make sense for someone to have a rudimentary understanding of this language, and it is useful if one happens to find themselves in France or somewhere better but yet the language prevails.
if for some reason you were, to simplify things, to find yourself in France, your first reaction would be to display outward signs of distress. much of this distress would be fuelled by the fact that, sooner rather than later, you would need to eat something so that you may have the strength to eat and leave France. eating in France is, as is widely known, quite a dangerous thing.
in basic terms, French food consists of - excluding French sticks - onions, garlic, meat extracted off a horse and croissants. whilst these are perfectly acceptable forms of nourishment for French people, and i suppose they find them agreeable, they are not really of the fine nature of food we, the English, are either used to or prepared to tolerate. needs must, however, and so if an English chap were to find himself stuck in France, he must learn to request the only food which comes close to meeting English standards - croissants.
as William is particularly fond of eating and would, if he found himself for some reason in France, be quite keen to eat, i have taken it upon myself to instruct him how to order this food source in both the language that they use and in a style of dialect that they would understand.
yes, granted, William does not strictly speaking have an outrageous moustache to actually twiddle, but the French are simple folk and they will understand the gesture without getting hung up on the specifics of the actions as such.
why French? quite simple, really. for centuries - and this i know is usually excluded out of politeness from history lesson - people who were considered "lower class" or simply not worthy of a proper language were not allowed to use English, as this was considered beyond their station in life. as for some reason they felt a need to still communicate with each other, French was widely adopted, as France had no such concerns about who used their words. this simplistic and not at all fussy nature of the French is quite charming, and exists today in everything from the cars they make to the clothes they wear. despite the laws on using English being relaxed somewhat, there are certain people who understand and appreciate that they are not worthy of such a fine language, and so stick with their ancestral limits and elect to adopt French as their means of communication.
if you were to find yourself in France, getting out of France would obviously be the priority. if the second priority is eating, then the third is being able to express your dismay, surprise and shock at basically anything which the French do, for they do not embrace the benefits of the English way of doing things.
yes, that is James in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. i find it most beneficial to launch "surprise" attacks on my children, armed with a camera, a bit like how Kato / Caeto did in them smart Pink Panther films. i could have used a better picture, i suppose, but i thought you might like to be assured of the fact that neither of my children are presently in France, a fact borne out by the presence of lavatory paper in the bathroom.
anyway, as James is the eldest, it is likely that if something was wrong in France whilst he was there - an invasion, perhaps, by an unspecified Bavarian nation - then the French would stop scowling at him and as him, as an ambassador for England, to please help and assist them with their plight. here is the reaction i have taught him in this respect.
it has been proven, time and again, that sacre bleu is the only French term you need to know, other than croissant. and, you know, baise-moi , je suis en France putain de tous les lieux . pour l'amour du Christ s'il vous plaît me chercher à l'aéroport ou le port le plus proche , maintenant, but that's a given.
do i dislike the French? not at all, and i am very sorry if for some reason you have taken this article or my efforts to teach this most splendid language as a sign of my utter disdain and contempt for them, for that is simply not the case. Napoleon was awesome and he was French. and the dude on bass off of The Stranglers. other than that, i have every reason to suspect that somewhere along the line of two thousand years of history the French must have done something or other that i didn't mind.
anyway, i must now go and teach my children some more French. if you are not one of my children - and that's a fairly large group - don't hesitate to use the above as your means of learning key words and phrases on the off chance that you might need to use them.
sean excelentes los unos con los otros!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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