Looking at the resumes for the members of the local francophone group there are so many people who have lived in France for years or have degree level French that I’m not sure I dare attend the meetings with my tiny amount of the spoken language.
I confess it is quite hard to improve outside France - I signed up to the fun-mooc course but looking at the first week’s exercise realised that the suggested study time of 4 hours per week is probably the absolute minimum needed and I’m not sure I will find the time. It’s only 6 weeks though and we have a break at our place in Brittany coming up so if I can get the first two weeks done I might manage the whole thing.
I know where Anna is coming from even though I thought her words a bit harsh when I first read them. That said I would never say that “I can speak French”, I might venture that “I know a little French” if pushed.
Sometimes things can be a bit dispiriting though - we have a French exchange student staying with us and, despite only learning English for 2 and a bit years he is almost better than I am in French (and I have been “learning” since I was his age which puts me about 40 years behind).
Oops, sorry
My point was, if someone says “I can speak French” people will have high expectations and think Oh excellent, no need to make allowances, they can hold a conversation in French and take whatever is thrown at them. If it turns out they can’t, both sides will feel embarrasssed - floundering out of your depth and losing face having to admit je ne comprends pas is not good for the ego, and the person speaking to you will be a bit thrown as well and will have to rapidly revise their approach.
Why not say “I’m still in the process of learning French”? It gets the message across and sounds very positive and if you say it with a nice hopeful smile people will probably fall over themselves to help you.
Being surrounded by French speakers really is the only way to get properly fluent I think. Hands up I have a degree in French and at the end of the course, having spent a year working in France, I could hold my own. Then life happened and for ten years or more I never set foot in France. When I did revisit, I was struggling to string a sentence together. It did come back but it was a slow process. And I think it’s harder as you age. After living here for 10 years I suspect I’m not actually as competent now as when I was a bushy tailed new graduate with all my marbles firmly in place. I know more vocabulary and I can cope with real life situations such as dealing with URSSAF and the fisc which I couldn’t have then, but I rely far too much on machin-trucs and bidule-machins and le putain comment-ça-s’appelle-déjà, whereas 40 years ago I probably could have filled in the blanks far more coherently. Don’t be shy about using what you know, we’ve all been there, we all know how hard it is to build confidence and we’ll be sharing your pain and rooting for you, not looking down our noses!
If I go into a situation where I’m not confident then I tend to start a conversation by saying “Je ne parle pas très bien le français” which lowers expectations considerably and tends to make people a little more patient with me. I can usually get by in most situations and as long as you try to speak the language I find most people very accommodating. There are some who just decide they are not going to understand you no matter how well you pronounce your words but they are few and far between.
If I’m really struggling and the other person is getting impatient then I’ve been known to say “Excusez-moi, je parle comme un singe”. It usually lightens the situation somewhat !!
I used to apologise for my “français petit nègre/petit chinois” which I picked up from various perfectly well-educated Frenchmen who you wouldn’t think would say anything offensive (usually in the context of complaining about some of the cold callers on the phone) - then it occurred to me how un-p-c this would be considered in the UK, and although I frequently hear it used in French I shy away from it now.
Great story, very encouraging to hear, Very best wishes for you in your grappling with French, but your cheerful humanity will win people’s hearts for sure!
and if you say it with a nice hopeful smile people will probably fall over themselves to help you.