Quote Originally Posted by WES View Post
Thanks GG, great advice. I'm doing pretty much all of that - Mrs WES is learning it too and we're both doing courses and endlessly asking people 'encore et lentement svp' so we can learn it. My professeur is a quite attractive uni student who lives in Mauritius!

Toughest part is just how quickly the Frenchies speak! Still struggle with penetrating the accent.

We'll get there but it is more slowly than I had hoped. I can pretty much read it now and speaking is ciming along. Someone told me I'd be fluent in 3 months but no chance of that, sadly.

Paris is, well, Paris. There's a reason it's the most visited city in the world. Loving it here. Can't imagine life without a tradition every day.
'encore et lentement svp' is vital.

What you really want is one or more best mates. I remember being with one of my best mates in Toulouse and one lunchtime she had a couple of friends 'round. They were nattering away but when she saw one of her mates had spoken to fast for me, she'd repeat what she'd been asked and answer in noticeably slower French. That way her mates would remember I was there and listening {and speaking a bit}, would get my level and would all make an effort to slow it down a bit for me.

If you have a best mate who takes you out and introduces you to his mates, he'll do the same, hopefully. Certainly once you ask. Despite what Brexiter types say, Parisians are incredibly polite if you try to speak their lingo.

Likewise, as with that Italian mate of mine, ask your mates to correct your errors, say it's not offending you, quite the opposite. Th ey'll get used to it and it makes it easier to remember what they corrected cos you can visualise where you were told.

Are you watching Netflix with Fr subs? We only have iPlayer at home but when staying with my mate opposite Ile St Louis, his 20 year old daughter was really into this Ch4 comedy set in a Bristol 6th form college so we watched that each night along with computer football and decent music.

So I'd listen to the English, read the French words and when something didn't make sense, I'd hit pause ad ask her. Might get a 3 word answer, we might talk about why the language was like that for 10-15 mins.

{It was great cos I once helped her. Two of the 6th formers, bf and gf, were sitting by the river in Bristol.

Boy: My mum and dad really feck me up, Kerry.
Girl: Yeah, Steve, but they don't mean to, y'know.
Boy: I get that Kerry, but they really do.

When I told her that was basically a famous post-war poem by Phillip Larkin she was amazed. It made her love the show even more.}

Oh, one time I was in Toulouse and the bloke was there with one of his male mates. The 12-2pm local tv show was on. We'd all been chatting and my French was at its very best 'round then. TV show had an article on Brit retirees living in the area who were doing French cookery lessons. My mates mate said in French "Fear God, the ****ing English get everywhere" and he nodded in my direction to remind his mate he'd been talking to a Rosbif.