As you say in your article about the growing dominance of English in Europe, native English-speakers are notoriously hard for their colleagues in Brussels to understand, for they talk too fast, or use obscure idioms (”English is Coming,” February 14, 2009). Of course, the same holds in Prague or Rome. How about an embarrassment of English accents, though? I remember lamenting once in a Glasgow taxi that the Scots learned English too many centuries ago, for I have never had any problem understanding a taxi driver in Amsterdam or Helsinki. The paradox of the growing dominance of English in Europe is that the British, too, will eventually have to learn at least two languages: their native dialect, which few people outside their quarters will be able to fathom, and, well, proper English.