Wayne Boatwright wrote:
> On Sat 22 Nov 2008 11:47:00a, sf told us...
>
>> OK, I left off an e. I only do restaurant french and I'm pretty bad
>> at that too.
>>
>> fiancée
>> Function: noun
>> Etymology: French, feminine of fiancé
>> Date: 1835
>>
>
> I would venture to say that most people in the US don’t know the difference.
>


Particularly those who have never studied French. I wouldn't hold it
against them.

There are half a dozen other popular languages studied in high school
and more in college. (Right now I'd say Spanish, German, French,
Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, are fairly common.) Somehow the
rest of the world holds it against us if we aren't fluent in all of them.

We have a young Swedish friend who is fluent in Swedish, German, French,
Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and English. I can't imagine keeping them
all straight but he's in international banking and gets lots of practice.

gloria p