If I want to say “I’d like to agree a date for delivery” what’s the best way of doing so - fairly infomally.
“Je voudrais que nous nous mettons en accord pour la date de livraison” would, I guess, convey what I want but sounds/looks (to my English ears/eyes) as stiff as a board
Can I just say “Je voudrais agréer une date pour la livraison”?
There are so many variations on a theme and each of us will use whatever we are most comfortable with… Relaxing and not minding if we make grammatical mistakes - that is half the battle.
My French is not really up to phone conversations - even if I had time during the day to make a call. Previous discussions on the forum have highlighted that even quite competent French speakers struggle with the telephone.
Also I’m not over in France until next weekend
So email is definitely the best option - but even there, it is entirely possible to wind up saying something subtly (or not so subtly) different to what one intends.
I usually try to keep things simple and run the message through Google and/or Deepl before sending. Not perfect but hopefully would prevent a real howler.
Reminds me of my son who was close to being top of his class in French at prep school. We asked him to book an hotel at a posh northern France resort we were flying into with friends and were really proud to hear him speak so fluently and confidently.
Alas, when we arrived we found that he had booked the wrong weekend!
He’s so laid back - he just smiled and said “oh” or something like that. He’s a pragmatist (not unlike his dad). His view was - well I didn’t want to do that anyway so in future, you’ll do it yourself, won’t you - and we did
The hotel were very helpful. They found us a room at the back (probably intended for staff) in two parts separated by a curtain - very cosy!
All the other hotels in the resort were well booked up.
When our daughter was about thirteen, her Mum, her school pal and I were flying out of Marseilles with RyanAir to Dublin. Now that she was “all grown up” I asked her what time we needed to be at the airport and she checked the boarding passes. We arrived in the Terminal just as the flight took off. What could you do but laugh. Luckily there was another flight later in the day but it cost a grand to rebook the four of us. I’m sure sure her pal’s parents thought we were nuts. Which was quite amusing as he’s a trick cyclist