Lingua French-a

You've finally arrived, you precocious little polyglot from middle America, you.  Armed with a suitcase you've packed, unpacked and repacked for the last 6 months, a brand spanking new passport (because our neighbors don't care), a Eurail Pass,  the required English/Your Second Language Here dictionary and/or app; and sporting a t-shirt with a maple leaf that screams "I'M AN AMERICAN TRYING TO NOT LOOK LIKE ONE", you have landed somewhere overseas (probably in Europe) where the primary language is not shared by Shakespeare and the commercial flight industry, ready to show off your 1-12 or so years of classroom grammar and of course study of relevant literature, encompassing fond memories of "Sur le pont d'Avignon", "Ist das nicht ein Schnitzelbank?", "Cielito Lindo" or the "Gena Krokodil Song" (I think that about exhausts the foreign languages taught in American schools).

Why USians think we know languages when we don't

Earlier this year I posted about an unpleasant interaction I had with a Frenchman who lives in California. He scoffed at me for posting on my facebook page that I "know" French. I explained that the template for listing languages in your profile says "knows".  So don't blame me, blame Mark Zuckerburg.  It is probably more on target to say I study French.  What followed was his stubborn insistence that I was somehow being dishonest and a poseur of sorts -- pardon, poseuse. I was really exasperated by this.