A lot of Canadians speak the nasally sounding French (even us Western English speakers, my parents were sadists and put me in a French immersion school until the 8th grade). What impresses me is the European countries, particularly Switzerland, the Northern countries, and so on, that all speak "their" language, but typically also 3 or 4 others, and very fluently as well. German/French/English in Switzerland were all very common when I was there, Norway, everyone spoke English, Norwegian, and usually one or two others. Languages are so much easier to pick up when taught from a young age, children speaking 4 languages is no big deal in Europe, parts of it anyway, but in N.A. if you speak 4 languages in high school they rave like it's some "gift" that's been imparted.
Regarding English - I think it is time the world recognized that English in the UK is so far different from English in the majority of the rest of the English speaking world (North America, most of it at least, aircraft communications many places, etc) that it should be given a different name. "The Queenss English, Britlish, Ukish,", while the rest of us can just stand pat with "normal" English. We can even drop the cap letter, and have it just be "english". Yay! Insert old man icon a la Zack.
