BA Boeing 727 Take Off

[TobyV]

Slightly stranger (to me at least) that of the 28 NATO member countries only France, Canada, Belgium and Luxembourg have French speakers, in only one of those countries (France) is French the sole language, and France withdrew to a large extent under de Gaulle.

[NigelC]

Another example of the French being 180' out of kilter......

[TobyV]

I've only GCSE (and some years ago now), but I suspect it comes from French and English having the opposite order for adjectives: for us it would be a "a blue car" but for them it would be "une voiture bleu". So, using their logic, it's an organisation, what kind? a treaty organisation. What treaty? The Atlantic. Which part? The north. It's a sort of "filing system" approach.

[Garry Russell]

That's exactly what it is,,,never any doubt as to why

Like the ATR.42/72 which was a joint French Italian project where a literal translation from both languages is Aeroplane Trans Regional rather than a Trans Regional Aeroplane.

Another was the French Concorde prototype F-WTSS and the British G-BSST.

It was mentioned that the French are only sort of affiliated to NATO, but the fleet were registered in Luxembourg where one of the three official languages is French.