Last night’s guests for dinner included two couples who were quite near neighbours. One couple, a retired Belgian pair looking for a house in the sun, were Walloons and therefore French native speakers, Madame had a reasonable fluency in English and they both had a smattering of Flemish (very close to Dutch). The other pair, from Holland had, of course excellent English, mother tongue Dutch but,even though living in Paris, remarkably little French. Their communication between each other, despite recourse to three common languages, was, it turned out, quite difficult and both couples had to turn to us often for help.