When I spent a year working in France as an assistant English teacher I was often complimented on my spoken ability. When I first arrived everyone seemed surprised that someone had actually taken the time to develop a French accent in the first place and that there was an assistant who could actually speak French properly, who was willing to take part in school activities and who was willing to make the effort to get to know some French people. As if this wasn’t surprising enough, once I started to get to know them we talked more seriously about my spoken French and isolated a few areas where there were problems.
When I left France at the end of that year I was flattered by all my friends and colleagues telling me that not only had I become significantly more capable of speaking the language but that I now sounded like I was born and bred in France; I sounded like a native speaker. This is (or should be) every French student’s dream and yet I still found myself doubting – they’re my friends, they might be saying it to be nice! So imagine my surprise when last week, whilst on holiday in Brittany, I went into one of the many Irish shops and found myself having a stimulating conversation with a member of staff. This in itself is perhaps not that exciting, but she suddenly seemed to realise that I was an Englishman (probably something to do with everyone else in my family talking English next to us!) and immediately started telling me how impressive it is to hear an English person talking French as if he were French himself. From a friend a compliment like that is fantastic, but from a complete stranger in a shop it took on a whole new meaning and left me believing that I deserved every bit of my Oxford degree, and it wasn’t a bad confidence booster either!
So there you go, I might be English, but I could very easily pass myself off as French. In fact one time I did. I struck up a conversation with a delightful young lady in a bar in Rouen. In French. It took her nearly half an hour to work out that I am not French. Sadly her American accent gave her away rather sooner, but it’s much heavier than my Leicestershire accent, so we’ll let her off for that. Besides, I was enjoying speaking French.
~ Chris