Geez, I wish I had been forced to learn Spanish in elementary school - French is pretty much worthless to me.

Tucker's right.

It's harder to be a jingoist when you can more readily compare your culture to another's.

As I listen, Oon Armistice Day, to songs commemorating the experience of the common soldier, I have to wonder if young Johnnie Bull and young Bayern Sepp would have spent four years in the trenches dying for their Fatherlands and respective (and related) King and Kaiser had each been able to speak the other's mother's tongue.

Surely the common dogfeet had more in common with each other than with the ruling classes they died for. (Of course WWI also killed off a good bit of those ruling classes, and it was an ignorant Austrian corporal who started the next war, so maybe I'm indulging in too much brotherhood of the proletariat sentimentality.)

Ein was für fucking Wanker
Quel branleur foutu
uno che va in culo a sua madre wanker

Some of the common dogfeet called a truce for Christmas day and spent it celebrating peace together. The next day they returned to their respective trenches and proceeded to kill one another.

popinjay.

fff, in ww1 some front-line troops had a gentleman's agreement whereby they would only attack at pre-determined times and locations.

On one occassion, a German soldier accidentally killed a British soldier with a grenade. He stuck his head above the trenches and apologised profusely.

i can't find the original article, but have found the live-and-let-live system in trench warfare

What kind of language classes? A new one, or a "home langauge class", a language that one (or both) of the parents speak like we have in Sweden?

All kids should be taught another language, early on too, it's good for the brain. :) My french classes came way too late, 7th grade, nothing stuck. Quel échec.

To be fair, I (and most of the other kids in my grade) was in "Continuing Spanish II" for about six years. I'm not saying we should do away with the language curriculum, but we could revamp it a little.

i keep waiting for Fucker Knobson's tie to start spinning.

He said having people running around speaking two languages would be "bad for the country".

I better tell my mother (fluent in both her native Italian and English) to go on the lam.

You know they're teaching Arabic at my old high school now. Can't get more shady then that.

Also, I know a girl who's getting a $35k signing bonus with CIA because she learned Chinese.

People actually watch that fool and not because its part of a dumb drinking game?

Damn, the Home Shopping Network is more honest than he is.

Maybe he's just tired of people insulting him in languages he's just not smart enough to understand? Der Schweinehunde (yeah yeah, high school German was 18 years ago, back off!)!