We had a record-breaking 12 teenage girls staying in the house last night. I’m not quite sure why, it’s not anyone’s birthday as far as I know, they just kind of turned up, ate lots of food, made a lot of noise, talked all night and then left the next morning.

They kept coming up to me to ‘have a chat’ or ask questions, as far as I could tell just for the pleasure in hearing my ‘unusual’ French accent, or perhaps to see if my French really was as poor as the children like to make out.

Talking of foreign languages, our eldest daughter focusses on these at school – English, French and Spanish mostly – and it seems she has a bit of a reputation around her lycée for her ability to speak in lots of of foreign languages.

She is one of those people that will make a little bit of knowledge go a long way so if, for example, she learns 20 words of Italian, she will manage to successfully give the impression that she has spoken Italian from birth, casually dropping Italian words into the conversation completely naturally and in a suitably convincing Italian accent. A great gift that I sadly lack myself.

A while ago she picked up on saying ‘guten tag’ (hello/good day in German) for reasons I can’t recall, and would say guten tag at all times of day, for no particular reason, to anyone at all, as a sort of little joke. Off to bed, off out with a friend, given a glass of water, all were accompanied with smile and a ‘guten tag’. We amuse easily in our house.

What I hadn’t realised is that she was doing the same at her lycée, where German isn’t widely taught or known. And amusing herself by telling people that ‘guten tag’ was an English comment suitable for all situations, a sort of mix between ‘voila’ and ‘ca va’, as I understand it.

Net result: it seems that now half the lycee walk around saying guten tag to each other for no apparent reason, thinking it’s the new cool English thing to say.