If you can't master English, try Globish

Jean-Paul Nerri�re has declared that the new lingua franca of the global village is Globish. If you can't master English, try Globish:

The main principles of Globish are a vocabulary of only 1,500 words in English (the OED lists 615,000), gestures and repetition.
[...]
The seeds for Globish came about in the 1980s when Nerri�re was working for IBM in Paris with colleagues of about 40 nationalities. At a meeting where they were to be addressed by two Americans whose flight had been delayed, they started exchanging shoptalk in what Nerri�re calls "une certaine forme d'anglais perverti." Then the Americans arrived and beyond their opening phrases, "Call me Jim," "Call me Bill," no one understood a word. And Jim and Bill, needless to say, did not understand perverted English.

Nerri�re's site, jpn-globish.com, has a number of articles, in French, about English (or American) and Globish. Naturally, "Fuck", un mot � ne pas employer, mais � conna�tre et reconna�tre caught my eye. Reading about your own language's argot can be quite amusing. I enjoyed this pre-Starbucks joke (at Americans' expense):

En revanche, si vous voulez vous illustrer aux yeux de vos amis am�ricains, vous pouvez leur poser la devinette suivante: "what is the difference between the american coffee and making love on a beach?" ("Quelle est la diff�rence entre le caf� am�ricain et faire l'amour sur une plage?", le caf� de l�-bas �tant connu pour sa dilution, � l'oppos� des pr�f�rences fran�aises et italiennes qui r�clament la concentration savoureuse).

R�ponse "There is no difference, they are both fucking close to water". Difficilement traduisible en fran�ais, mais l'effet est assur�.