Bad Language

We have to be honest. When we came over here to live in 2002, we over-estimated, by a considerable margin, our abilities with the French language. True, we had both done a year on a fairly intensive conversation course with the Alliance Française in 1990 but thereafter we had limited our use of French to holidays. It has to be said that sailing through three our four weeks of holiday each year, when the most complicated thing you have to do is order two beers, is no preparation for the demands of living here.

Imagine the things you have to do in the course of your life wherever you live. These will probably include shopping; getting your car repaired; dealing with your bank; responding to the demands of the Inland Revenue and your local authority; explaining your needs to builders, plumbers and electricians and trying to understand their explanations as to why it’s not as easy as that; visiting the doctor and the dentist; ‘phoning your ISP help-line to seek assistance from some spotty teenager who understands IT but not people. Now, think about the French or Spanish or German you learned at school and imagine how you’d cope.

By comparison with many of the British people we encounter, we were pretty well fixed when we arrived. We never cease to be amazed by the number of people who come out here to make their permanent home – and it must be noted that this is not Paris or Lyon where you stand a good chance of finding French people only too pleased to speak to you in English. This is deep, rural France where almost no-one speaks a foreign language - without a word of French and without any intention of learning. Leaving aside the communication needs listed above, isn’t it polite to try to speak to the native inhabitants in their own language? And bless them, they love it when you do, no matter how badly you do it.

Well of course our French has improved greatly since we came here and we both claim to think in French now. No longer do we stand outside a shop rehearsing what we’re going to say before entering, although sometimes we wish we had. But there is a downside to this. We find that increasingly we’re losing our English vocabulary faster than we’re replacing it with the French. So now we find ourselves struggling to communicate in not one language but two.

Right, I’d better go down to that room where the cooker is and switch on the thing that boils water so we can have a nice container of tea. Arrivederci.