Instead of French, we could teach global languages such as Mandarin, Arabic or Spanish. And why not Italian? The easiest European language to learn is also the idiom of music, food, Dante and Inspector Montalbano. 

Unlike the French, other Europeans are delighted when you make an effort. In Canterbury recently I spoke Italian to a man at a food stall (it took me two and a half years to muster the courage). The response wasn't a shrug or a sneer, but a beam and the valediction, "Grazie! Ciao ciao!" But when I tried to speak French to natives at Le Weekend festival in Sandwich in June, the response was utter indifference.

I don't blame the French for their attitude, having lost the language war to English. The British can be comparably resentful about the ubiquity of American English. But the British aren't proud about English threatening other languages, which is why most of us make an effort to speak French when we go to France. What we can't abide is being belittled when we thought we were doing the right thing.