I am asking myself whether Councillor Larry Sanders and Sushila Dhall would be quite the people they are today if their own immigrant families had not been obliged to peruse official material in English.

Debatably almost defeating their own argument, they, pretty indisputably, claim that learning other languages gives us a richer view of the world.

I was more intrigued by their assertion that such a pursuit is physically good for the brain.

While having a few drinks with some mates after a funeral (Vincent McKeown of Abbey Place), which Sushila herself had attended, as it happens, one of them (Andrew Mikalski, son of centenarian have-a-go hero) informed me that the stroke I had experienced a year earlier might have been far worse had I not been something of a polyglot.

I did not disbelieve this, but rather put the thought to the back of my mind, so to speak.

But I am now wondering whether anyone else has anything interesting and informative to say upon the subject.

DAVID DIMENT, Riverside Court, Oxford