By G. Mikes When I arrived in Engla

By G. Mikes When I arrived in England I thought I knew English. After I'd beenhere an hour, I realized that I did not understand one word. In the firstweek I picked up a tolerable working knowledge of the language and thenext seven years convinced me gradually but thoroughly that I wouldnever know it really well, let alone perfectly. This is sad. My only beingthat nobody speaks English perfectly. Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishmanuses are far from being the whole vocabulary of the language. You maylearn another five hundred and another five thousand and yet another fiftythousand and still you may come across a further fifty thousand you havenever heard of before and nobody else either. If you live here long enough you will find out to your greatestamazement that the adjective nice is not the only adjective the languagepossesses, in spite of the fact that in the first three years you do not needto learn or use any other adjectives. You can say that the weather is nice,a restaurant is nice, Mr Soandso * is nice, Mrs Soandso's * clothes are nice,you had a nice time, and all this will be very nice. Then you have to decide on your accent. The easiest way to givethe impression of having a good accent or no foreign accent at all is tohold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your teeth and finishall your sentences with the question: ' isn't it? ' People will not understandmuch, but they are accustomed to that and they will get a most excellentimpression.