French Language a Hoax

Back a few months ago, around the time that Wacko from Wikileaks published all that embarassing stuff he had on the US and other governments, an online British paper called the News Biscuit published a story saying that French President Nicholas Sarkozy had admitted that the French language was a 1,000 year old hoax. The story drove my Parisian friends nuts! I adore the everlasting love/hate relationship the French have with the Brits. It makes life here so much more interesting watching and listening to them interact. But, I digress. If you haven't read the complete article, here it is:
"After yesterday’s Wikileaks revelations, Nicolas Sarkozy has today confirmed that the “French language” is indeed a one thousand year old hoax. The president of France revealed that what purported to be his native tongue was in fact complete gibberish, admitting the French really speak English, except in the presence of the British. This comes as Wikileaks published cables sent by French diplomats to countries such as Spain, China and Russia which were all found to be written in English. During a speech given in received pronunciation, the French President came clean, stating that it all started off as a joke during William the Conquerer’s invasion to make the aggressors seem a bit more exotic. “What was initially a prank snowballed and after a few years we realised we’d look silly revealing the truth, so we had to keep up the façade,” said the Premier. “In the company of any Brits we would try to make convincingly “French” sounds, a mixture of guttural grunts and rapid-fire syllables.But as soon as we were on our own we’d all heave a huge sigh of relief and revert to English. We developed a heavy reliance on hand gestures to cover up when we ran out of likely noises, and the shrug was a particular boon if inspiration dried up. In the end we became quite the raconteurs, with an impressive array of supposed vocabulary. So what began as a game for the élites, became a hobby across all levels of society, and it shocked us that the Brits were so naïve as to not see through the charade.”