Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkE
Not specific to France, but there have been comments advising you to learn the language; you do not have to be fluent. I've made good friends with only the six basic social niceties (yes/no; please/thank you; hello/goodbye) plus "a piece of that please". For France you might also need "Would you buy me some fuel on your card? I have the cash here".
The only other thing I have ever needed is a willingness to laugh at my own mistakes when corrected. Starting here I've normally managed to pick up some of the local language in the course of each visit, to the extent that I am now incomprehensible in several languages (must visit Gibralter soon as I speak fluent gibberish)
The exception to this was the Netherlands, where I lived for a year. I really tried, but as soon as I said "morgan (sp?)" (= hello), they heard my English accent and immediately switched to better English than I speak!
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So true Mark!
In France, one thing many Americans are guilty of is, when meeting someone, to just charge in and start trying to tell them what you want/need/
directions/trains .... whatever.
In France, no matter what ..... start every conversation with Bon Jour or
good afternoon or good evening.
And Mark is correct , you need not learn a complete language. You can in fact get by nicely on about 5 verbs and 100 other words. Listen carefully when spoken to, try to pick out what it is there are saying. And alway apologize for your poor French up front! At that point many will switch to English.
Funny thing used to happen in the Pyrennes along French/Spain border. I had just assumed folk in these areas would be bi-lingual. Not so. At least not the French. They refused to speak a word of Spanish. In Andorra they are happy to speak Catalan (Basque language) and even Spanish .... and lots of English there too. But elsewhere on the French side not much luck with Spanish.
Have a great trip.
Patrick
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Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!
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