>>Most folks under 40 west of the ex-Iron Curtain speak English, and a lot of the Easterners as well, particularly Germans and Russians.<<

It's among the most popular second languages in Europe, because it has global reach this century.

>> (Legend has it that the Cornish pirates stole all the ARRRRs in British English and absconded off to Cornwall with them, but the chest cracked somewhere in Somerset and they left an increasing trail of Rs all the way home... :) <<

*laugh* I hadn't heard the part about the chest cracking. But there is a similar joke about Hawai'ian stealing the vowels from Welsh.