I've been in France for the past ten (gulp) years but am, in fact, a piece of Yankee hegemonist scum by birth and passport. And I still speak English at home with my London-born wife, so I'm not even one of those expats who can claim to have forgotten how to speak their mother tongue or anything. Though I can see how that last post's meandering ways might have suggested that I wasn't a native English speaker. Or a native earthling.