I envy my bilingual friends, but I must admit my ugly-American monolingualism never really hindered me. I've traveled all over the Middle East and what I couldn't understand there, translators could. We spent two years living in Paris, where I wrote a book about an Englishman. Nestled inside a bubble of expat Anglophones, I learned just enough French to amuse butchers and bartenders. Whatever else they say about Paris, most urban French know some English. Continue reading at Slate.