My first experience of the French culture was the 11 days in Ottawa, Canada. Both English and French are official languages there, so it was not difficult. I could just read the English signs, and talk to people in English. However, when I went to Montréal, it’s a totally different world! Everything is only in French. I couldn’t figure out how to use the metro. And when I asked people for directions, the answer I got was in French. Luckily the body language always works in a similar way.
Now I am in France. I am not a tourist. I am living here.
The Paris airport is not a problem – they even show Chinese and Japanese. But the moment I stepped onto the ground of Grenoble, I knew things were different. Fortunately, my husband has been to Grenoble several times (for research work), so he knew how to use the tram.
We have had difficulties in the supermarket. We did not know the French words for body lotion… We bought the wrong meat for cooking… We couldn’t understand the casher at all… But still, the hospital has been a bigger challenge. At the beginning, I could not even respond to the question asking for my last name. Scheduling an appointment has never been easy for us! The other thing is that even the websites are only in French… (you would think that the internet might be more international, wouldn’t you?)
My conclusion is that in France looking for an English-speaking person is as difficult as looking for a Chinese-speaking person.
Some people say that French people don’t like to speak English, that they are rude. I don’t agree. I feel French people are quite nice, and they are trying hard to communicate with me. It’s just that they cannot speak English, like I cannot speak French. However, I cannot deny that I am a little surprised by the fact that the majority of population in this western country do not understand English (at all). I thought English was widely used in the whole Europe. Or maybe France is the exception? I heard Finnish people spoke English.
Such a non-English environment provides the best opportunities to learn French! We learned some basics on Duolingo (a very nice app). But that’s still far from enough. I found listening and speaking extremely difficult. Even if I know every single word in the sentence, connecting all the words together sounds quite different. Now we know we are moving to Finland soon, so we have less motivation to learn French… However, if we ever return to France, I want to be able to speak French!
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