Isn't English one of relatively few languages where "true" (letter-by-letter) palindromes are even possible? In Russian it is all but impossible to write a sentence which spells same backward and forward, because endings of Russian verbs and adjectives are very asymmetrical, and their reverses simply do not exist in that language, even on word boundaries. When a Russian says "palindrome" he usually means word-to-word palindrome -- a sentence or a paragraph with same word order forward and backward. I don't think true palindromes are possible in French either, for the same reason.