For many people the thought of learning a new language seems a bit overwhelming, even though millions of people worldwide do exactly that when they move to new places (either because of work, family, war or natural disaster) and learn new languages.
One of the reasons why we feel that its more bother than what it's worth is that we think back to our school days - years spent learning French or German grammar and we still couldn't have a conversation with a Frenchman or a German at the end of it! Maybe we put it down to the fact that we British "just aren't good at languages."
In fact, it's more to do with the age we started learning the foreign language or the methods used to teach us. Have a look at the following clip (courtesy of Eddie Izzard and YouTube) which illustrates perfectly what I mean...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IzDbNFDdP4
Au revoir!
