BuckinghamshireBoy

Right-ho, not pronunciation based then. What you have described here is EXACTLY what's tripping me up at the moment.

Gordon Barlow

In half a dozen visits to France over the past fifty years, my experience has been that the natives are delighted to hear an Englishman even attempt to speak French. They appreciate the courtesy.

Once, years and years ago when I was in an American Express Office behind an American tourist - overweight and over-bearing - who was giving the French chap behind the counter a hell of a time, abusing him (in unnecessarily loud English) for every fault under the sun. When he finally left and it was my turn, I asked my question in my very hesitant schoolboy French. The garcon said impatiently, in English, "You can speak English" - but there was no way on earth I was going to risk being associated in his mind with the preceding English-speaker. So I stumbled on in atrocious French for the whole five minutes of our conversation, defying all his pleadings to abandon the pathetic effort. "No, this is your country," I said, in broken French, "So I must speak your language. That's only polite." In the event, he suffered far, far, more from my efforts than from the rude American's, but there was no way I was going to let him off the hook.

spouse of scouse

Well this Frenchman doesn't sound very delighted or appreciative of your efforts!

Tweedpipe

This post made my day! From now onwards I plan to refer to Mme TP as the 'native'.
Watch this space, or the obituary columns...........

scot47

When I spoke Bulgarian I was sometimes asked what part of the Soviet Union I came from !

Gordon Barlow

Ah well, it's all too late now, sport!

Gordon Barlow

Well, if she's native-born French, and you live in France, what else would you call her? Please tell me "native" for a native-born in any country is not on the English-speaking world's list of taboo-words these days!

grannybunz

I thought ithat is a given !

cyrian

That would make you an alien then.

Gordon Barlow

Well, you may not know this, but in US-English, "alien" is the word for "foreigner".
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alien

BuckinghamshireBoy

I'm not attempting to hijack, honest, but this one brought me up a bit.

My third Flemish lesson yesterday, I was advised to 'stop thinking in French'.

We were into pronunciation (at a very, very basic level) for yesterday's session.

My new prof is good and spookily on target with that remark, I do think most of the time in French.

dmu

You're not hijacking the thread! Interesting point, which can lead to another question:
If you aren't same-language couples, do you all think in French (and, like me, have problems adapting when visiting an Anglophone country)? To my embarrassment, I often bring out a literal translation of a French expression instead of the English equivalent...

cyrian

Yes I did know that thanks.
Hence the smiley

Novocastrian

This is so true. I became fluent in German after working there for 8+ years also to the point of thinking in that tongue. Years later when we decided to buy a second home in France, although I had been OK in basic french earlier in life, for several years I was still thinking in German as I attempted to converse in French. This resulted in German sentence structures emerging in French all by themselves.

I think I'm over it now.

BuckinghamshireBoy

Linguistically this (now extended) household is a complete hotch-potch. I'm English mother tongue, with a quite reasonable level of French, and a smattering of German from when I lived and worked there 30-odd years back, now just embarking on Flemish. OH is Dutch/Flemish mother tongue, with perfect English, arguably fluent French, a similar level of German to myself plus a smattering of Finnish - this due to her best mate being a Finn. Eldest stepdaughter is French mother tongue, with fluent Dutch, English and German, and an increasing interest in learning Italian. Her boyfriend is German mother tongue, fluent English, rapidly taking French and Dutch on board. Younger stepdaughter is rooted in French, but understands Dutch and English well enough to reply...in French.

It's not uncommon for us to have French, English and German intermixed within a conversation, sometimes even within the same sentence

In my time spent in Suisse Romande I took part in three national censuses (I received a book token for participating in each!) one of the questions was "Which language do you think in?" I replied 'English' on two occasions, but the last time I honestly answered 'French', presumably I was fully immersed by that point. I remember at the time that some UK press picked up on this census question and reported it as if it were 'a strange question'. Well not to me, for sure.

We've been in Flanders for three months now, it seems that OH is well and truly 'home' on the language front, and she frequently asks me for French terms - we still have a pile of administrative Swiss French stuff to be gotten through.

I often have trouble finding a phrase in English when speaking with Anglophones and have revert to French in my head and attempt to forward think it, especially true with idioms.

"What on earth are you talking about? Chickens don't have teeth." kind of thing.

So, I'm thinking in French, OH in Flemish - I know this from when she talks in her sleep! - I imagine that both the girls think in French, I'll ask when I go to visit them next month.

Sentence structure is less of a problem for me, as I rarely speak German these days, so I don't get into the "we know where, when and why but not what" trap.