The British are notoriously bad at learning foreign tongues. But with Franglais, the late Miles Kington showed anyone could get by on holiday with just a petit peu of effort, says the BBC.

If there is one foreign language that English speakers always seem to crack, it’s Franglais.

Its rules are simple. Insert as many French words as you know into the sentence, fill in the rest with English, then speak it with absolute conviction.

Although it wasn’t known as such then, Franglais is found in Shakespeare and has probably been used for as long as the English and French have had to talk to each other.

It is simple to learn - Bill Wyman’s line ‘Je suis un rock star’ being a good start. But Miles Kington, who died on Wednesday, did it best. After all, he coined the name for this hybrid tongue.

Read more on the online BBC Magazine.

Categories: Media, Take-up of languages