Throughout our house purchase and renovations, via importing and insuring cars, paying taxes and joining the Health system, we have spoken in French. I would not have settled in another country without intending to speak its language. That's not to say I speak perfect French - far from it. In every case, officials have appreciated that French was our second language and have helped out. NOBODY has ever pretended not to understand our French. MOST people have nervously tried out their English on us so we understood one another better. We always apologise for our French, and officials have always respected us for trying to struggle along in French, and everyone has been particularly helpful and gone the extra mile to ensure instructions were clear.
We do live in an area where there are few English residents. We are the only English customers at our branch of the bank, the only English residents in our village, our GP's only English patients, etc. so maybe the French don't find us too threatening. One or two of our neighbours spent a year in England in their youth. To say they speak English now would be stretching it a bit, and they always speak French with us. I can count on one hand the number of people in our village who speak fluent English and one of them was married to an Englishman. On the North coast, in Paris, in tourist spots, maybe you would find a higher proportion who can speak English with confidence, but not in our part of the Jura.
It is particularly difficult for officials to advise or discuss with you in English, as if they make a linguistic error you could receive the wrong advice completely. We have fun with the GP sometimes, clarifying important points, and when she had a patient who didn't speak French but had English as a second language, the GP checked for English phrases with me before delivering the lady's baby.
It's a shame Ashley has gained the impression that language may be used as a bit of a weapon - it hasn't been our experience. btw, my Mum was a Pettit, Ashley, perhaps we could compare family trees?
I nearly replied to your question by saying "well, actually Ashley we are guests in their country so we should not expect them to bend their brains and speak our language because we cant speak theirs" but then I spotted your explanation further on, so now see where you are coming from.
I find it extremely difficult to learn french- but am really really trying. When I need some information or have to deal with someone about something difficult then (because I have no shame) I ask them if they possibly speak english with a smile and hopeful look on my face???? About 80% of the time they will say no, but having opened up the conversation I find this then allows us to go forward in franglais with less embarrassment and usually between us we can muster up enough franglais to get by. The other 20% would never volunteer the fact that they can unless asked. It amuses me every time.
Having said that though, on my first visit to a medical consultant I did hire a translater. Too important a subject for any misunderstanding.
I was told by a french friend that the english lessons here are generally poor and as they are a shy race (well the Bretons anyway) they are too embarrassed to try and speak it. I continue with the verbs and hope I master it all before senility arrives…
The feared USE will never happen. 28 countries with 30 different legislations/constitutions and 30 largely incompatible legal systems. The EU moving closer together by all means but any kind of merger. Spreading nonsense about a USE is a fearmonger's tool, no more and no less.
I heard, on France Inter the other morning, a suggestion that interpreters should no longer be available in hospitals and other official places. On the lines of why should the country pay interpreting fees so that these foreigners can gain access to services. I would have thought that an interpreting service could only save public money.
Thanks for your candor Veronique. It is not PC, but it is very true.
The problem is that in these days of blue jeans, sneakers and T-shirts it is impossible to guess who you are associating with.
An early mistake I made was that when told my neighbor was a teacher at ‘college’ I assumed she meant at university level and spoke to her along those lines. She never spoke to me once I learned she educated adolescents. I did not care, but she did. She had been the village prima donna where most of the residents had only 4 years of school being cow herds, shepherds and woodsmen.
Interestingly we had no trouble with les vrai paysans.
The only actual exams specifically required when I went to university were Latin & Maths O levels. I don't think you'd have got on very well if that was absolutely all you had, but those were the only required qualifications...That was in 1981. You are right about learning English, those of us who grew up with it don't realise how hard it is to learn and to use well. I grew up with my (French) mother making occasional hilarious howlers even after years of it (& likewise in French with my Scottish father).
Part of the problem may be that immigrants to any country fall very broadly into two categories, the first are those who move through economic necessity with little academic baggage but have manual skills, who need to integrate and are at the bottom of the social heap, they have to speak the new country's language to survive & probably aren't parachuted into a different social environment even if it is a different country.
Then you have educated cosmopolitan people, possibly of independent means, who choose to live abroad, have academic skills which may not initially include language but do have the experience of other places and acquiring other skills which will help them in the new country. These people will find themselves in a state of culture shock if they move to rural France (or rural anywhere) because they will not have encountered paysans (for example) before as neighbours in their community with whom they are expected to integrate and it is probably a bit of a shock to the system. All their cultural assumptions will be at cross-purposes. I probably sound very un PC and a crashing snob but if you consider who your friends are in your home country & what they do & who your neighbours are here & what they do there may not be much overlap and they may very well have absolutely nothing in common.
I had a very similar experience moving to Cheshire many years ago when I found myself living in a community where most of my neighbours had nothing in common with me at all in that they had generally left school at 16 to do manual jobs and thought London was abroad, foreigners (including British Indians, Pakistanis and people from the Caribbean) were awful or a joke & that "rice & spaghetti were dangerous foreign food" & wouldn't eat it (I was actually told this by one of my neighbours about her husband). I used to bump into Eric Cantona* in the post office (he spoke English) but mr. post office was very suspicious if we spoke French so you see it isn't JUST France...
*I didn't know he was a football player, I thought he was the chef in the local 'French' restaurant. We didn't have heart to heart conversations, he was on his phone in Fr & said merci automatically when I held the door & I said je vous en prie... & subsequently bonjour & au revoir & that was that.
This week I have had dealings with CPAM, the local tax office on behalf of a friend and a delivery driver. In each and every situation I have found the people that I was dealing with patient, helpful and appreciative that I was prepared to speak in French. All very welcoming.
I still have a copy of 'Current Latin Usage', sounds pretty ancient! Actually it appears to be a 1964 edition.
The joke is, if it is at all funny, I have O level French, Latin and German, plus A level Latin and German but failed English four times! I have English Lit, but not language. I have learned more about grammar and the versatility of languages from all but English. I got into university without English because I had Latin, which back then was considered about as important. Having learned the intricacies of German language early and then at a school in England, I think I have climbed one of the hardest mountains there was to climb in that respect. French always seemed a doddle compared. However, and the English language world seems to forget this, English is actually a very hard language to learn. Grammar is all over the places, orthography and pronunciation do not even coincide in many cases let alone show any consistency, to actually speak of syntax - to arrange words and phrases to create well formed sentences - is to try to define the indefinable. No matter how hard other languages look from within the English language world, try looking at it the other way round.