French males !!!!!

[threebikesmcginty]

Whilst the French may frown on those that don't converse with them in their native tongue, I don't think they typically consider it a capital offence.

If you do entertain their mother tongue though, the slightest of mispronunciations will mean that, although they understand you perfectly, you will have to go through the shoulder shrugging and quizzical look routine.

 

[Archie_tect]

Quoi?

 

[threebikesmcginty]

QLF

 

[Boris Bajic]

OT, but it made me giggle:

We were talking with a French guest the other day about silly translations, like: "Messy Bucket" for "Thank You" and similar...

He told us that French kids say "Garlic or Radish?" for "Are you ready?" It comes out as "Ail ou radis?" which is quite funny.

Sorry, carry on with the thread....

 

[Puddles]

This has reminded me of camping...

In france - man refusing to speak french or even try just spoke english louder - campsite owner just looks at them blankly & eventually they buggered off. I got out phrase book and started to talk in terrible school french. Campsite owner then put me out of my misery and spoke perfect english. Apparently he had a policy if you tried & were rubbish he would speak english to you if you didnt even try he pretended not to understand

 

[s7ephanie]

Pourquoi vivez-vous en France quand vous ne parlez pas français?

I took the wrong turn at the tunnel, also my son wanted to live here

 

[hopless500]

and you're complaining??

 

[s7ephanie]

J'ai pris le mauvais virage dans le tunnel, aussi mon fils voulait vivre ici

 

[Archie_tect]

Ecoutez, et repetez... beep.
[Edit: thanks DP just corrected my present tense verb endings!]

 

[User169]

Ecouter, et repeter... beep.

For at least a decade, which ended somewhere in the mid 1980s, all British schoolchildren were taught not just French, but Longman Audiovisual French, a cutting edge combo of green illustrated textbooks and ‘slide tape’, the technologically cumbersome combination of a strip of celluloid with pictures on, mounted onto an overhead projector and manually wound on from one picture to the next by the teacher at the sound of the ‘bing!’ on the narrative soundtrack played on a big old blocky cassette player with integrated speaker. Stars of this low-tech son et lumière were La Famille Marsaud, a rather starchy small town petit bourgeois nuclear unit, drawn in an appropriately stiff manner with lots of awkward sideways-on posing. Sadly, Les Marsaud never seemed to get up to the sort of racy activities The French were supposed to (at least, according to Tom O’Connor and BBC2 film seasons). Monsieur Marsaud was always dans le jardin, Madame Marsaud perpetually dans la cuisine. Scallywag son Jean-Paul was forever en retard pour l’ecole, and the Jane Birkinesque Marie-France spent a suspicious amount of time hanging around with Monsieur Lafayette, le facteur. Then there was Claudette, who, er… skipped a lot. Life in provincial France was, the hapless student couldn’t help but conclude during a long Thursday afternoon of ecoutez et repetez travail, rather dull.

 

[User169]

J'ai pris le mauvais virage dans le tunnel, aussi mon fils voulait vivre ici

Ahem!

 

[Canrider]

Ahem!

I think that's acceptable. Il veut 'live' en France, ou il va 'inhabit' une maison <-- Boy, that didn't scan as well as I thought it would Il veut vivre en France, ou il va habiter (dans) une maison.

 

[User482]

If you do entertain their mother tongue though, the slightest of mispronunciations will mean that, although they understand you perfectly, you will have to go through the shoulder shrugging and quizzical look routine.

I speak terrible French and that's never happened to me. In fact, they usually go out of their way to speak slowly, using words I'm more likely to understand. If that fails, they'll switch to English.

 

[User169]

I think that's acceptable. Il veut 'live' en France, ou il va 'inhabit' une maison <-- Boy, that didn't scan as well as I thought it would Il veut vivre en France, ou il va habiter (dans) une maison.

OK. Fair enough - I was always taught to use "habiter" when referring to where you live. Mind you, post #44 is a good summary of how we were taught French.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I speak terrible French and that's never happened to me. In fact, they usually go out of their way to speak slowly, using words I'm more likely to understand. If that fails, they'll switch to English.

Maybe your French is so crap they feel sorry for you.

I speak French reasonably well, it's understanding what comes back that's the tricky bit.