Well even if you do you don't represent your entire country. Most Americans get English horribly horribly wrong. sorry, but it's true.
A lot of English people get English wrong, let alone Americans! Not only do we need to promote foreign languages at primary and secondary school level, even further than that into sixth form, but we also need to teach kids that the bloodyTellitubbies aren't speaking properly!
For the benefit of the americans I might point out that "let alone americans" does not imply letting them off the hook as it were, far from it in fact! Well what we need is foreign tv, films and internet. I've just signed up for a french football forum - I'm hoping to visit it regularly enough to keep my frog in check - got drawn to it by a Nantes fan who runs it who says he's adopted QPR as his "equipe anglais" - good for him! You've got a point about the teletubbies - if they're not going to speak decent english you might as well have them speaking another language properly instead. Young'uns have a habit of catching onto these things.
Any sort of internet community where a foreign language is king is a good start. Although speaking and listening is quite a step up from reading and writing.
Guten Tag! Guten Tag! Ich will mein leben zuruck! I discovered some old cds of mp3s that I'd burned from an old computer recently - including a few Benny B tracks - french hip-hop. I was amazed at how much I could follow - couldn't just understand it all straight off but there were words and phrases still stuck in my head from when I learnt french at school, and I did my GCSE about 4 years ago and haven't really used french much since then. But I haven't forgotten too much of it.
The joy of German is that so many words sound or are spelt the same, but in different contexts mean something completely different! My god, I love it...*steam coming out of ears...*
I love Latin Mater tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. or Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam. I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head or even O! Plus! Perge! Aio! Hui! Hem! Oh! More! Go on! Yes! Ooh! Ummm! Most effective I think.
Or the more direct approach from CLC book 3a: caudex! stultior quam asinus es! Blockhead! You're more stupid than a donkey! Learn latin, get an underlying knowledge of all the European languages AND know what all the Harry Potter spell chants mean (or would mean if the latin were correct).
LOL, I don't think it's MEANT to be correct latin. It's just using botched latin for dramatic effect. Same with what the japanese do with english as a marketing tool. When they put english on their products, it's not for the benefit of people who don't speak japanese, it's for a gimmick, an effect really. That's why there are so many mistakes on it because they never bother to check it - they don't need to as no-one really ever reads the english as there's normally everything they need to know in whats written in japanese.
