My two alien life forms

My Two Alien Life Forms, an amusing article in this weekend's Guardian is a timely corrective to the popular view that English is somehow carrying all before it as it spreads across Europe. The author, an English woman living in Brussels, tells of her struggle to raise her children to speak good English in a sea of rising French in the Belgium capital. When it's your language under attack, you suddenly get an insight into how much culture is wrapped up in your own mother tongue.