She said French is a second language in her home and that her kids are learning to speak it, so being in this country at this time is good for her family.

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The second is the decline of the French language, which has lost the importance it had at the height of great French literature.

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That is why it took Switzerland more than 20 years to introduce teaching in a second national language (German or French) at the age of 11-plus instead of 14.

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The word that springs to mind is neither French nor English, but one in New York's unofficial second language, Yiddish: chutzpah.

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