Despite a lifelong exposure to the French language, learning it all through school, using it at Uni and on into the work place, a twelve year sojourn in Australia where possibly the only two French words used would be Café and Croissant, has taken me back to what feels like Square One.
A course at Alliance Française before we left had me feeling rather confident, chatting comfortably with Geoff and Cathy the language presented no problems. Try chatting with Gaston and Carine and it’s a different situation entirely. They have accents, you see, use slang, speak quickly and don’t care whether you know what’s going on or not. We don’t want to be the ex pats who can order a meal and ask directions and that’s it, so off to School we went.
Most unpleasant. I spent a lot of time sitting there seething that the French see fit to have eight ways of saying ‘this, that, these and those’ whilst we have only four, and insist on frequent use of the relative pronouns ‘dont’, ‘que’, ‘qui’, lesquel’, ‘laquelle’, ‘ou’, ‘auquel’, ‘duquel’ – remembering to change things for masculine / feminine / plural !! – all of which can be entirely omitted in English, or the use of ‘that’ will suffice. I sulked for days about such preposterous nonsense, let me tell you.
After settling down and accepting I just had to learn all the ‘nonsense’, things improved somewhat and I enjoyed my school days. Alex enjoyed his too and had quite a fun class. We were both interested to note our schoolmates were Swiss, Italian, Swedish, German, Brazilian, South African, Australian, Dutch, Austrian – all of whom spoke excellent English, which is possibly why there were no British there – why bother?? Everyone speaks English and if they don’t, we can just shout and point – or use Google Translate on the i phone...
We have come to realise, however, that our biggest stumbling block is each other. We aren’t going to speak to each other in French, so our home environment remains English. We have French TV, subtitled in French, which helps, and we are looking forward to the day we can grasp every word without the use of the subtitles. We try to speak for twenty minutes a day to each other in French but usually end up just shouting and pointing – or using Google Translate. Roly and Pepper have learned to ‘restez’ rather than ‘stay’, but Oscar remains resolutely indifferent.
Trying to apply our new language ‘skills’ out there remains frustrating. French people almost always reply to you in English no matter how abysmal their English is and no matter how competent your French is. I have been asked directions, given them perfectly, only to find the recipient asking the next person on the street, and receiving the exact same directions I’d just given! Was I not understood – or trusted, perhaps? I’ve been asked in supermarkets, restaurants and airports if I speak French, have replied in the affirmative and then been spoken to in halting English. Most confusing. It’s hard not to feel insulted when one’s French is routinely ignored, so we are trying to pretend that the French just want to practise their English and aren’t being rude. Unlikely, but it helps keep us calm. We’ve even noticed that Google France takes this approach – after initially presenting the page to us in French it has now decided to default to English!
These difficulties really do batter confidence and it’s easy to see why people just give up, especially if the language of the world seems to be English and the French seem thrilled with their own capabilities in English too boot. Short of living in separate homes in remote countryside and learning a rural argot, there seems little Alex and I can do other than persevere. I suspect we are being impatient and a little hard on ourselves. After all, I can argue in French with Orange Telecom over the phone, organise pet sitters and rental cars, send back rubbish coffee in cafés, chat to fellow dog walkers in the park and even talk drunkenly for hours with our local restaurateurs – what more do I expect after only ten weeks in the country? Just think, after a year I may be able to run for French Parliament – or they will all decide to speak English instead, seeing as they are so good at it.....
