Yep, delighted to have an exchange with him. Half english then half french. Please ask him if he’d like that and come back to me after Easter (I’m away). Skype or phone is fine for me 
Funny, normally it's men who have no patience.
No, no children. It's a fully-fledged adult male, my other half to be precise. We always speak in French at home and even though his English has improved over the years, he says he has a mental block when it comes to speaking English with me and he says I have no patience.
So, if anybody else is interested.....
Hi Therese, sorry I can't do that, but hope that someone can help out even if for only a short time, perhaps you can post some more details; his age (21, 18, between 14 and 17 etc.), his English spoken ability so far, etc. Then someone might find they can offer a Skype call to start. Careful if they are children about contact.
Hello Billy, if you (or anyone else) are interested in a French/English language exchange I can put you in touch with someone who would desperately like to improve his spoken English. He needs conversation practice, preferably in person, but Skype is ok as well because I doubt any of you are in our neck of the woods (Moselle, dept. 57). If any of you are interested, get in touch and I will pass on his contact détails.
Pour moi, c’est une excellente idée .Comme vous voyez le syntaxe n’est pas au top,mais avec le temps et l’habitude nous allons y arriver a améliorer notre français
My wife recently told her french friends she had a new chiotte - they fell about laughing as I believe its the name for the brick sh*t house at the bottom of the garden !
...à la jeune femme qui était à la caisse... je me suis corrigé en disant "Excusez-moi bonjour mademoiselle" ce qui était bien reçu. just to give you a few pointers. Try jeune fille next time (with a nod/look) if it's a woman who isn't as young as all that but to whom you want to pay a compliment/drag a little...!
Like the comment about cyclists - I ride with a local club and yes, you can't possibly pass another cyclist without saying hello. Cycling clubs must be one of the few places in France where you can tutoie somebody you've never met before!
Dans un supermarché j'ai dit "Bonjour Madame" a la jeune femme été dans la caisse, puis rapidement moi-même corrigé de" Pardon moi. Bonjour Mlle" et il est bien reçu.
So politeness does work. In the UK there are the brain dead staff and there are the friendly staff who will chat and help once spoken to, yet either party would rarely greet the other with a hello. In the street the friendliest to chat, greet or wave in passing are decidedly the Scots. Cyclists aside !
it's désolé - désolée for a woman/girl mais il ne faut pas être désolé, c'est normal, on passe tous par là ! ;-)
Desole, bonne chance or is it Desolee ?
another new word learned :-)
When I buy my newspaper in the morning it takes a few moments as it's de rigeur to double kiss the only lady present and to shake hands with every single man before I get to the counter. On leaving it's usually bonne journee. Later in the same day you have to suss whether you have already done the daily ritual or not and if you have done it before there's a little coded hand movement which indicates "fait deja". It is a small village though.
Pour moi aussi...
They will go back very quickly to being polite French people if they are polite & after a bit if they aren't so polite ;-) mainly because their friends will all expect them to go round doing individual bise & handshakes when they first see them etc. You should see my pupils outside lycée & at break in the mornings! ALL of my pupils without exception say Bonjour Madame as they come trooping in & I say bonjour x bonjour y & z back... & then Bonjour tout le monde when they are all in & I tell them to sit down.
I think that sort of politeness, greeting people etc, stands them in good stead when they go anywhere in the world - it isn't smarmy & I'd say it is better to be thought too polite & slightly formal than to be thought rude.
That's so sad. My children think shop assistants in GB are rude, generally because of the not saying hello automatically, they usually get a hello or a good morning etc back once they have said it themselves but again generally from older people - younger shop assistants just tend to do that bovine mouth open look if they acknowledge their presence at all. Mind you their UK cousins have no manners at all either, so perhaps it is also a generational thing that shocks nobody but fogies & foreigners ;-). In rural Scotland it is more like France, people do say hello etc.
Funnily enough when I spent a week or so in the US I felt the 'Have a nice day' came across as insincere. You really have to spend time listening to how people work and the different vocabulary they use in various situations. eg in the past I would have prefaced a telephone conversation with 'bonjour' Now after working with people who use the phone I have learned to say 'bonjour madame' etc. I think anglophones are very casual and don't appreciate how rude we can appear. I must say that now that I am more comfortable with people, I don't do the hand shakes/kiss routines but it is not meant out of rudeness, simply old habits dying v hard (after 10 years here).
I wonder how the young French people living in London will change things when they return to France.
Oui, et quand je rentre dans les deux cafés où je livre le journal "Bonjour tout le monde", je rigole au "Bonjour monsieur tout seul!"
As for the UK, we were last there last spring and went shopping in Oxford, I don't think a single shop assistant said hello to us as we entered the shop, my OH was horrified and the kids just said "Bonjour" each time they entered a new shop - it took a few before I could get them to say hello with their lovely frenchy accents rather than bonjour, but even that didn't really get much of a response :-(
My children are always horrified by people who don't say 'Bonjour' coming into shops etc & 'Merci, au revoir' on the way out again. They do it in GB & Germany & Spain as well as here. In the UK they say they get funny looks but are considered very polite, if a little old-fashionedly so.
How about the nuances between "Bonjour Mesdames; Bonjour Messieurs" "Bonjour Messieurs dames" and 'sieurs'dames' ?
have a good day et travaille bien !