In the preparation of these columns, the first of which appeared in print in July 2016, my remit from the New European newspaper has been to write about language and languages in Europe. This has not at all meant that I have never written about other parts of the world, but it does mean that each column has at least some connection with at least one language of European origin. Although the focus is very much on Europe, the columns have been written by an Englishman who lives in England and is a native speaker of English; so when I write ‘we’, I often mean English speakers; and when I write ‘in this country’, I mean England, or Great Britain, or the United Kingdom.