I come across this constantly, and not only in the pages of the Daily Mail, by people who claim to have a good working knowledge of more than one other European language, but also among other UK-based tour operators at the Germany Travel Mart. I once got into a heated arguement with a group of them on just this theme. I am truly amazed at how few tour operators working with the German (and Austrian) market speak more than a few words of German. The amazement is only reinforced by the initial surprise of many of my German contacts when they discover that I am quite content to speak to them in their own country using their own langauge.

I am not sure about the grammar being that easy though. True, until a year before I went there, my secondary school taught French only to the more able and German to the less able, but they also said that that only worked up to ‘O’ Level. Beyond that stage, the situation reversed. Indeed, when I attended a German evening class in Switzerland, a Czech classmate was almost reduced to tears by what he saw as the utter illogicality of the way German makes use of prepositions. The teacher attempted to console him by telling him how lucky he was that he was not learning English. And she was right – think about it!