Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: I'm impressed with anyone knowing the roman languages. They seem incredibly hard to learn Interesting you say that. English is an even split between French and a Germanic root. The Germanic root comes form Old Saxon (similar to Fris and Platte Deutch) via the Angles and Saxons, and form Old Norse, from the Danes that settled the north of England. There is virtually no Celtic (no more than a few words) in the English language. So, from our point of view it is as easy to lean French as a Germanic language because we have so many ellements of both. For example, the germanic emglish word 'give', from gefen, is duplicated by a french word, 'donate'. The same is true for 'help' and 'aid', and many others. Many long English words come directly from french: Economy, history, governement, impression, situation, delay, arrive, comprehend etc Some of our grammer is very germanic; 'Is that apple' being translated by the Dutch 'Is dat apple', and 'Have you eaten' being translated by 'Hept u gegeten'. And many of the more common, shorter words are Germanic, his, her, we, I , you, that, is, was, door, boat, hound, sea, earth, land, see, hear, speak, out, in etc. As you can see, English is a young, impure languge. But flexible, and allowing a native speaker to understand the root languages. Nunc est bibendum