Since we are talking languages... I speak a language which no longer exists, serbocroatian. After the war Croatia made an effort to erase the Serbian part from everyday language. There was even a daily short show on TV called "Croatia learns Croatian". By then I was living already in Germany so my parents and I never learned it so technically I still speak and understand serbocroatian only.
Unfortunately they were many Frenh words in the language, especially in administration. So ridiculous things happened like you are not supposed to say "avion" anymore but "airship" instead because this was considered to be "Serbian".
They rather invented new words when they couldn't find a original historic croatian expression for a Serbian considered word. (things like telephone, équipe, porte-monnaie, avenue, promenade, etc)
There was a huge French influence on the Balkan, starting with Charles Lemagne, then when the benedictine munks came and built all the monestaries. Crusaders, too. Even the French masonry became popular. It was chiq to speak French and rich people sent their heirs to the Sorbonne. Especially since there was always a connection to Russia and there was French spoken, too. During Austria-Hungarian times royalty spoke French.... And of course the idea of liberte, égalité et fraternité... If political refugees were looking for an exile they chose France, and a singer had made it if he had shows in France.
Also they became quite obsesssed with french literature, also food, chansons.
Napoléon was there, too, and brought a lot of administrative ideas and of course vocabulary.
On the other hand there was a time when it was popular for the French to travel the balkan since it was considered foreign, exotic and a bit of dangerous but not too much like the more Eastern countries but still somewhat civil.
To me when I hear French it has the same lovely melody like Croatian. I used to think French sounds like Croatian as a child and believed "voilà" means "hvala" (thank you)
And you know those award winning French movies but you think they are just weird and depressing? Croatian movies are the same
So a couple of weeks ago I bought a new remote control and for some reason there was no instruction in German, English, French or Italian. I had difficulty to understand the Croatian version so read the Serbian instead
I feel like a 100 year old when I don't know the new vocabulaire which came up with the pandemic even though by now I learned at least all the words regarding youtube, internet, Smartphone, computing. (words like subscribe, like, comment, chanel, download, update etc) It feels so weird to see Croatian youtubers talking about a drugstore "haul"...
WTF ???