Peter Mayle (born 1939), British author famous for his series of books detailing life in Provence, France, Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France (2000):
The French, it seems to me, strike a happy balance between intimacy and reserve. Some of this must be helped by the language, which lends itself to graceful expression even when dealing with fairly basic subjects…. And there’s that famously elegant subtitle from a classic Western.
COWBOY: “Gimme a shot of red-eye.”
SUBTITLE: “Un Dubonnet, s’il vous plait.”
No wonder French was the language of diplomacy for all those years
