Long time lurker on here. Question to all the ex-pats: I’m genuinely interested, how on earth do you manage day-to-day without speaking French?
I moved to France from England after (having been brought up there). I have French nationality, my entire family live here, I speak the language fluently. And even so, it’s still been really challenging at times.
I just can’t begin to imagine how insane it would be not to be able to communicate…
I’m not sure I understand your point. if you are saying that people living in France will have a better experience if they speak French then I agree. If you are saying people should only move to countries with languages they are fluent in then I disagree. Regardless, I’m not sure what you mean by “ex-pat”. I don’t think there are many ex-pats on here.
All countries are “challenging at times” but half the fun of moving abroad is overcoming those challenges 
Ex-pat means non-French.
Last week, my internet connection went down. I spent 45 minutes on the phone to Orange relaying information, receiving instructions, making appointments, filling out online forms in order to get the internet started again - all with a French call centre handler who was at times speaking very idiomatic French. The week before, I had a medical emergency which involved describing symptoms, giving a medical history and receiving diagnostic information. Afterwards, it got me thinking: what do the ex-pat Brits do when this happens? None of these people spoke English (why would they?) And this is just the day-to-day stuff, never mind the social integration.
No it doesn’t.
Ah, apologies. What’s the correct term?
immigrant
Hello @Anon and welcome to the Forum…
This has been discussed and chewed over… elsewhere on the forum…
here’s just one link… with 245 posts on it… which you might find interesting…
Incidentally, @Anon (just a thought)… you might like to change your name to something else, since Anon is automatically used by the forum-computer to mark when someone has been removed from our midst … (either by personal request or for a serious misdemeanour…)
I experienced some rather idiosyncratic French while speaking to an Orange call centre. When I talked to the call handler about this he explained that the call centre was in Morocco and French was not his first language …
And not just French call centres, if at all possible I avoid English ones too, much preferring the live online written ‘chats’ where I can mull over the vaguaries of Asian English.
I did ring the Orange English help line recently and the bloke at the other end certainly wasn’t French, or English.
But to get back to the original post, yes it is difficult and many of us seek the help of those more competent, in my case despite working here in a totally French speaking environment on my permanent arrival 23 years ago, my comprehension (but not speech) of French has deteriorated for many reasons. So much so that in important meetings regarding my wife’s health I have English speakers of French alongside of me.
And yes, ex-pat is treated almost as a term of abuse insinuating as it does a temporary sojourn of someone with no intention of becoming part of the community, and the intention of returning to their country of birth. I, and most British people I know, prefer to be known as immigrants.
and, of course, if @Anon wants to stay that… fair enough… it just gave me a jolt to see a first-timer marked Anon and I wondered for a nano-second what this first-timer had done wrong… 
I am now fluent (and French) but 20 something years ago I was less fluent (and less French). And I agree that managing without good French can be challenging, However people are generally helpful so I would use friends, and accepted that things would go wrong because of my inability to communicate, and I would miss things as subtlety went over my head. As long are people are actively trying to learn then it’s fine as we all have to start somewhere if not our birth language .
What I find frustrating is people complaining about France, the French, stupid French practices,etc etc basically because they didn’t understand as their French is so bad, and say things like “I get by” to excuse making no effort to improve.,
Without sounding overly harsh to the OP, neither did I really which is why I moved on by, however well intended they, and the thread, may be.
Starting with
Then immediately saying
When even a cursory read of the forum would suggest to me that virtually everyone here has some degree of ability to speak French as and when needed, some better than others of course, but I’d imagine actually that as a rule people here have considerably better skills than some who actually do shut themselves in a pocket of Britishness in France. As I say, I’m sure it was very well intentioned but to me it rather hit the wrong mark as it was written as ‘how do you cope?’ When it should perhaps be ‘how do THEY cope? ‘
Everybody’s different, aren’t they? I came to France after working all over Europe, and occasionally Asia and Africa, for 20 years. When you might be in Kosovo one week and Myanmar the next you get very used to not speaking the language! Even with my limited French at the time, everything here seemed pretty familiar (and I’m in Brittany - if you think French is hard, you should try Breton! - but at least it has almost the same alphabet, and reads from left to right…).
My question to the OP would be: How would you cope in a really alien environment?
Orange have english helpline read this thread for the current number.
PS I am not an ex-pat.
I’ll second this is in a very slightly more official capacity, if you need help doing so let me know.
I agree with John. Those of us who moved here to live, from elsewhere, are immigrants. Ex-pats are people who are, for some reason, temporarily living in a country other than their nationality country but will leave when the reason they are there no longer exists.
And your point - having none at all of the local language must be … challenging is hardly a start to describe it.
I had very little Spanish when I moved there but because I have workable FR I wasn’t starting completely from scratch. I was soon able to operate day-to-day.
When I was with Orange Orange I had excellent service from the Eng lang call centre. And they even helped when I moved to Sosh.
Me too. One can dive onto ‘Translate’ and deal with it almost in ‘real time’.
Not being too good with FR on the phone my outgoing message has it that if the caller really does wants to communicate with me [not try to sell me a mutuelle] they should send a text.
Slight change to the number you quote: we have… 09.69.36.39.00 and just checked it works.
We’re not expats either…
That happened to me. His accent was unfamiliar so I asked him where he was based and he told me it was Sousse, Tunisia.
Like others, I too don’t consider myself an expat. I’m an immigrant. Unlike in the UK where the term immigrant seems to have negative connotations, I’m happy to be considered as such. I don’t want to be called an expat by anyone.