>I once had a date, here, with a French girl. To impress her, and to get in practice, we spent the whole evening chatting in French. It was interesting to overhear the rude comments about us by other Brits in a pub, thinking we had no English (now how does someone assume that of a foreigner?).

Hey, the PC police passes the "foreigner"! I thought it would be automatically replaced with "international citizen".

Er... not, you can generally assume that anyone knows at least a few bits of English. But, until maybe eighties or so, it was very common to meet French who just don't. They used to have that imperial attitude that everybody should speak French instead. I wonder where did they get that...

By the end of the seventies, I met a total of three French who spoke usable English - one was completely drunk but blabbered successfully, the other was my ride when I was hitching (saw someone to the train and then realized I had no transportation - too late for the last bus) and was a globetrotter and the third one worked in flight control, where English is official.

Later, I guess the following generations have changed the attitude.