I can speak French but I cannot understand it.

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter.

I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.

Ours is a mongrel language which started with a child's vocabulary of three hundred words, and now consists of two hundred and twenty-five thousand; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate three hundred, borrowed, stolen, smo