I think the "I like to be friends with you" is a corruption of the more classical (for lack of a better word) "I would like to befriend you" with the prefix be- denoting the action.

Couldn't agree more! As a philologist for whom English is a second language, I have a natural sensitivity towards these rules. As our friend mentioned before, in British English, the rule is to put the commas and periods outside the quotation, and I purposefully follow the English rules everywhere!

Something I want to ask you to bring into attention. English has its own names for other languages: Eliniki is called Greek, Deutsch is German, and so on. About the name of the language of Iran: the English name is Persian, a correct name based on the rules of English. However, there has been a wide use of the word Farsi in main stream media (and even the computer world). Farsi is the local name for the language, and as we don't say "I speak Espanol" when conversing in English, we shan't say Farsi either. Please point out this matter in your weblog.