" After the mother tongue follows French, for it is the most widely spoken and indispensable language of Europe; according to our present-day standards it is the most cultivated; fine style and the expressions of taste have been for the most part formed in this language and translated from it into others; it is the simplest and most uniform of languages from which to obtain a foretaste of philosophical grammar; it is the most suitable for the purposes of narrative, logic and reasoning. It must therefore, by the standards of our modern world, follow immediately after the mother tongue and precede every other, even Latin. I would like even the scholar to know French better than Latin! "

― Johann Gottfried Herder , Journal meiner Reise im Jahre 1769: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe