When I lived in Paris, I remember having a conversation with a young French woman who taught English in her local collège. We chatted about our mutual interest in language learning, and I put it to her that the vocabularies of English and French had much in common. She, rather reluctantly, agreed that there was common ground.

I went a step further, adding that “English grammar and French grammar is…” She finished my sentence for me: “Completely different!”.