Scary AustinI've helped fellow travelers in fluent French, okay Spanish, and even my sketchy Russian, but I will never be as badass as this person.
Flippin' 'eck, Tucker!@MaryAustinBooks A good demonstration of how rather like today English is a lingua franca so once was Latin. Ironically, French has never had that status!
Account has movedFrench definitely had that status, but only for a brief window, mostly in the 18th century. Frederick the Great for example preferred to speak French and complained that German was a language for peasants.
Gerbrand van Dieyen@alessandro @losttourist @MaryAustinBooks also in the 19th century in The Netherlands. The elite used French as a second language.