In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

--Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

Although Twain was certainly no Francophile, his barb here is proably meant as much for himself as for the French, as the following seems to show...

It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has always been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is! How expressive it seems to be! How full of grace it is! And when it comes from lips like those [of Sarah Bernhardt], how eloquent and how limpid it is! And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to understand it.

- Mark Twain, a Biography

But Twain probably knew a little more French than he lets on...

It is the language for lying compliment, for illicit love & for the conveying of exquisitely nice shades of meaning in bright graceful & trivial conversations--the conveying, especially of double-meanings, a decent & indecent one so blended as--nudity thinly veiled, but gauzily & lovelily*.

- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

Given that so many Americans have trouble even with their native tongue, it should come as no surprise that we are among the world's worst polyglots.
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