I was made to learn Latin at school, (does come in handy with biological classification !). English is only a real melting pot of all sorts of languages, Greek, Latin, Norse etc. and your right the English, Dutch, Spanish were good at forcing their own language on the 'natives'. If I had suggested learning Mandarin when I was at school I would have been laughed at,(or worse) yet that may well be the most spoken language. I,ve hardly heard Irish spoken in the ten years I've been here. There was a programme on TG4, in which, I think it was Manchan Magan went round Ireland only speaking Irish, he met very few people who could hold a conversation with him