Everyone has different abilities…
Being present at local events… supporting fund-raisings… celebrations… whatever…
that does not require any language skills beyond perhaps Bonjour/Bonsoir…
if the intention is to join-in with local life… such folk will be well received… and all and any efforts will be appreciated.
I’d like to be able to join the conversations in the local bar - not a chance at the moment (Breton accents probably don’t help either).
I’ve witnessed a group chat… without anyone saying more than “ça va”… be it questioningly or as an answer… as they look from one to another… and utter these magic words in such a wide range of innotations… almost musical… 
Reminds me of this:
A bit like my use of << D’accord . >>
Although I always enjoyed being in France and travelling through it, it was Fran who became fixated on looking in estate agents windows not me, but I don’t think it ever entered her mind what came with a permanent move and, as she missed so much schooling due to an insistant ‘showbiz’ mother (Fran had to be a ballerina, one sister a singer, the other a pianist, only the brother was allowed to follow his own path) and knew little of the construction of her own language, it is hardly surprising that a foreign one was a bridge too far. So, after 23 years of living here she still can’t speak it. I am disappointed but not judgemental, I understand. And now with vascular dementia she can’t even manage her own language.
Everyone has their own story - and I would not wish to suggest that David, or Fran or anyone else for that matter would move to France (or elsewhere) wilfully determined to ignore the culture and language of their host nation.
One does wonder about *some* Brits though. We are an arrogant nation born (no doubt) of the fact that we mostly “won” at the game of colonisation and there is a lingering facet of the national psyche which says other cultures learn English, not the other way around.
I don’t think lack of formal education in English grammar precludes learning another language - babies don’t worry too much about the nuances of the subjunctive or subordinate clauses as they soak up the language around them, after all.
I came across this lecture by Stephen Fry earlier today - towards the end he makes this very point
One does not need to academically inclined to use, and own, and benefit from. language.
Clearly everyone differs in their natural ability to acquire a second language. I know a chap who has lived in France many years but who’s French is, well it’s probably better than mine but I think he’d agree he isn’t fluent - but he does not need to be, his French wife speaks excellent English. It’s also harder as you get older. One of my deep worries is that my wife speaks only a few words and if we do retire to our maison française she might, by then, struggle as Fran did to learn French and risks isolation as a result - I’ll be the same age and risk the same difficulty of course but the fact that I learned a bit of French when younger might have cemented some of the necessary neural pathways.
To say that “I don’t understand” those who do not want to soak up the culture of their host nation is not to disparage them - the statement should be taken at face value, it is simply not how I feel. I suppose the main emotion is to pity them a bit. They must be missing out on so much.
When Fran was still completely compus mentis, but still entering elderlyhood, she used to drive herself and do all the shopping and had many friends of a similar age as she traversed the village shops. Once when I was with her I was amazed at having to standby for 10 minutes while she carried on what seemed to be a perfectly intelligent and interesting discourse with another old lady, neither of them had a common language. Even today, now and again, an old lady passes me in the street, recognises me and asks how Fran is these days. Fran was definitely not isolated in the wider community and we never had many English friends, so she probably thought there was no need to do anything about it. Too late to ask her now though.
Fran sounds like she was a wonderful and well like person.
She was, and is, but she is in a world of her own now and what little speech she uses, is usually too quiet and too indistinct for me to understand her which is very sad as she is then faced with my uncomprehending expression. I doubt any of it makes sense though, yesterday I managed to grasp ’ a lady gave me some sweets today’ and when I asked where they were she said ‘I gave them away’. To whom? ‘A man’.
We had no visitors yesterday.
Wonderful Stephen Fry lecture, thank you @billybutcher ! Now I feel impelled to locate the “woody words and tinny words” mentioned. I wish we could have seen the two video clips he showed his audience.
Recently, I have been looking at etymology and trying to find a clear path for a dyslexic pupil. He is French and finds the buffet of English very daunting. He suggested that French, to quote l’Academie, has ‘rules’. Yes but I replied, the young have invented the argot Verlan as a sort of youth code, something that reminds me a bit of pig-Latin:
And now, both in French and in English, to circumvent the censorship algorithms of social media, particularly Tik Tok, which is insanely popular amongst young persons, there is ‘algospeak’. I kid you not. Where sex becomes “seggs”, L.B.G.T.Q. Becomes “leg booty”, and homophobia rather ironically becomes “cornucopia”. Of course, there are more…
Seems Mr Fry has made the point well, that languages evolve and we had best keep learning and accept change. Classical French is but the start.
Excellent intellectual exercise!
Yes, especially the second.
To me, those who don’t even try to learn or speak French are deliberately making themselves deaf and dumb when outside the house. Why would anyone do that?
If they have arrived in France having decided they want no part in learning French - why indeed.
There is definitely a population of British who want nothing more than “Blackpool with sun” and there are parts of the world (mainly the Spanish med coast) which caters to that. Or did, I hear that they are a little less tolerant of the British who don’t want to regularise their affairs these days.
There’s nothing wrong with just wanting “Blackpool with sun” but there is so much more on offer.
and so they should - reportedly, a lot of the more arrogant ones even voted for Brexit 
Here you go
Yikes! Lots of woody rude words. Naughty Monty Python! 
I didn’t watch it, as I know the sketch well, which is why I instantly got the reference to woody and tinny sounds 
Yes, I always wondered how they got that sketch past the BBC censors 