If like me you've been watching the French Open, the most grueling of the four grand slams because it's played on clay, you've probably been struck by the sight of athletic young men and women doing what so many Americans find so difficult: speaking a foreign language.

True, that language is always English, which we already speak. And English is the so-called international language. But these are jocks who, minutes after a grueling match, are able to express themselves intelligently and sometimes eloquently in another tongue.

The other day I watched an interview with Dinara Safina. She is not one of the top players and so not often interviewed on American TV. So I wasn't expecting much. But she spoke very good English, an English that was free of the cliches many of our own athletes tend to feed on. (I loved when she said that, sometimes watching her older brother Marat play at his best, she cries.)

Safina, by the way, is from Russia and trained in Spain, so English is her third language. In her match against Elena Dementieva, Dementieva threw up an errant toss on her serve, caught it, and yelled "Sorry" to her fellow Russian. Dementieva's second language is French.

Announcers are always bemoaning the poor performances of Americans on clay, but the excellent showings of Europeans - not only on the court but in the studio - always make me bemoan our poor performances with foreign languages.

Of course the one exception seems to be the Spaniard Rafael Nadal, whose English is pretty rudimentary. The Swiss champion Roger Federer, on the other hand, speaks colloquial English. And if he ever wins this tournament - the only one of the four to elude him so far - he will be able to wow the fans anew by giving his victory speech in French.

Allez, Roger.

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If you read a lot of press releases, you know all about "staycations" and "mancations" (oh, where is the Man Show when we need it?).

The problem with these neologisms ("Ooh," as one of my college professors used to say, "that was a big word.") is that they're ugly. They don't fit smoothly; it's like hitching a wagon to a hippo.

There are a lot of good words already in existence that we could just change the meaning of to suit our holiday purposes:

unification - family reunion cruise
beautification - travels with a super model
altarcation - trip to Vegas to get married (Yea, I know, I changed a letter. And I'm going to do it again.)
bocation - taking time off for botox treatments
ramification - spending quality time with male sheep
intoxication - going to an inexpensive, usually Eastern European city and getting drunk (chiefly British)
desiccation - time spent in rehab
indication - traveling to hear indie bands
mastication - gourmet tour
lubrication - wine tour
verification - the age-old search for truth

Additions?

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