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Culture Food France Healthcare Moving to France

Some Moving Advice

I’ve lived in France for about a year and a half now, and I’ve gotten used to it. There was a viral story recently about a couple who went back to America after eleven months. Like others in the “stuff about moving to France” club, that story has inspired me to give a few words of advice. I’m going to skip what I’ve said before, because if you can’t at least say bonjour, au revoir, s’il vous plaît, merci you shouldn’t be considering even visiting France, because you won’t like it here. That said, here is what I am going to write about.

The pace of life is different in France. In America we’re used to having the means to push through to success quickly; the quicker the better, in fact. In France, it pays to be patient. For example, I started trying to apply for my residence permit (carte de long sejour) last February. I managed to do so successfully in April. I had an interview at the Prefecture (county administration is the closest thing in the States) in July, and was told that my card would arrive in November. All is in order. It is now November 26th, and my card has not arrived. There is nothing I can do. My temporary permit runs through mid-February, so I’m legal, so what I do is go on with my life and know that my resident card will, some day, appear in the mail. If that sort of thing seems like something you couldn’t endure, you’ll need to find somewhere else to live. Or stay put, whichever. I got a comment on an expat group that my experience with this was “light speed.” I was worried about this, and quite a lot. Until one day I decided not to worry about it any more, but just to trust the French system to work things out eventually. Not only have I felt better, but things have been happening as expected. Some advice for dealing with French bureaucracy:

  • Be sure that you know everything that you have to submit when first applying for whatever it is you apply for, and gather all of that information and documents before you start.
  • Most things can be applied for online, but you will, at certain times, need to appear somewhere in person and, preferably, interact with a bureaucrat at least mostly in French.
  • It will take forever for you to receive whatever it is that you have applied for. But it’s great when the thing arrives. My latest was my Carte Sanitaire, or national health insurance card. Just relax, live your life as if it will work out, and it almost always will. Work out, I mean.

You will have to learn French. You don’t need to speak like a native, but you have to speak and understand well enough to get along in a French speaking society. This seems reasonable to me, but here are some points about learning French:

  • You cannot learn French quickly. So forget it. If you took French in school, that may help, but the first thing you should do is de-emphasize all the conjugations and grammar and syntax, and emphasize simply conversing in the language. I can’t stress that enough: you must be able to hold normal, non-technical conversations with reasonable ease. You will have an accent. You will mess up. Those things are okay. If you want to fit in to France, you just need to understand basic French, enough to make some small talk, even though French people use a lot less small talk that Americans.
  • It took me four years of intense study to be able to use French at a B1 level, which is the level I discussed above. It’s roughly defined as “able to get along in normal society without undue problems.” You cannot simply devote six weeks to becoming “fluent in French,” which is pretty much a meaningless phrase in the first place.
  • To make it as fast as possible, a couple of things help. Maybe more than a couple. One, use French whenever you can. If they hear your accent and switch to English, bonus for you! I’ve had conversations where I spoke French, and they spoke English, and we’ve gotten along fine. We both got some practice, and we both understood the other person. Ultimately, understanding is the most difficult thing about learning a new language, though, and you’ll have to expose yourself to lots of French. Try French programs on Netflix, with subtitles probably in English initially, and in French as you get better.
  • Written French and spoken French are not the same language. They could be, but Cardinal Richlieu set up the Academie Française to keep the language “pure.” That very idea brings me to “and the horse you rode in on” but it explains why spelling French words is so difficult. There are at least five ways to represent what in English is the sound of a long “A”.

There are things that are almost impossible to get in France. Decent Mexican food, for example. Oh, they have Mexican, but they don’t use spice in it. You can read that again if you find it odd. Mexican food without spice is, well, it isn’t Mexican food. Fruits and vegetables are mostly seasonal, with some exceptions. For instance, right now, Thanksgiving time, you can’t find any strawberries. Turkeys can be hard to come by, although the local Lidl stores had some last week, and they were, while smaller than in the US, pretty ordinary, dressed turkeys. We plan to eat one on Thursday. French food, famous for being wonderful, uses herbs, not spice, so even if they do use some pepper, it won’t be at a level you’re used to. In the supermarkets, the American food section tends to feature Old El Paso. We have found some decent salsa, though, and one local store has a shelf featuring a variety of hot sauce, including Cholula, which is my favorite. You’ll have to learn how to find and/or order cuts of meat or certain vegetables. Zucchini is Courgette. Keep that in mind.

You will need a French drivers’ license. A few states (Ohio and Colorado among them) have reciprocity, most do not. Within one year of moving here you are supposed to have a French license. Without reciprocity you must pass two tests, one written (it’s online) and a practical. They are very strict, but few people fail completely. Keep in mind that it will take several months out of your life to get a license, and plan accordingly.

That’s all for now. When more things occur to me I’ll post them. I hope this helps somebody either decide to move or not, or to organize better before they move. Until next post, Au revoir!

Categories
Culture France language

The French Languages

A Real Book. A Long History. Written in French. Sigh.

You may think I’m going to talk about dialects of French, and there certainly are a lot of them to consider. French is spoken as a native language in the Carribean, in Canada, in Africa, and in Polynesia plus some other places. But, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that, whatever dialect you speak, you probably will need to learn two French languages. Spoken French (not too awful) and Written French (too awful.)

To begin with, let me show you a few letter combinations you can write to represent the sound we call a “long A”.

è, é, ai, ait, er (on the end of a word), and several more if you can believe it. Now, about the plain old e. It’s a schwa (the linguists term for it) which means it’s just a generic vowel mostly considered unworthy of being pronounced, especially if it is at the end of a word. Chien, is pronounced sort of like shieh. It means Dog, masculine or just generically. Chiene is pronounced sort of like “she-en” and means Dog, feminine. Many times, a vowel with an e on the end of it is the feminine form of an otherwise masculine word. If you see an unaccented e on the end of a word, never pronounce it. If you do, the members of Richlieu’s Academy will probably come threaten you with their swords, and maybe send you to their secret jail somewhere. (Kidding)

French, like English, changes verb forms depending on who’s doing it. I run, you run, he runs, that sort of thing. They run, easy enough. In French that phrase looks like ils courent. The word “to run” is courer. Keep up, now. To run sounds like “Cou-ray”. I run sounds like “Cour” (there is an s on the end of the word.) courent sonds just like cours. Yep, ent means absolutely nothing to how one pronounces the word in French, but it absolutely must be put there if you’re writing it out. L’academie français, founded by that famous Cardinal Richlieu, keeps a tight grip on written French. But, being a free country, French people say whatever they want to.

For example, if you take French, they’ll tell you that “I don’t know” is Je ne sais pas. Sounds sort of like Zhe nay say pah. But, forget that. Write it, but in speaking it, I kid you not, what comes out sounds a lot like Zhay Pah. In French, even under current rules, you could write that out as J’ai pas, but don’t ever do that, or the ghost of every retired French grammar teacher will haunt you to your grave. (J’ai pas, by the way, could be translated as “I have nothing.” That would even work, wouldn’t it?)

This, then, is a warning. study your academic French well. You’ll need that, if only to fill out government paperwork (or to read government paperwork) but remember to speak the way French people do, in what is, pretty much, an entirely different language.

Categories
Culture France language

Parlay Voose Francis?

Taken in Spring of 2019. You must know what this is, right? (La Tour Eifel)
In case you missed it, all photos are by the author unless noted otherwise.)

French people speak French. That may be their worst quality, but there it is. Many don’t know more English than what they maybe gather from watching a few American movies. Which is less than you might think, buckaroo! So I’ve been studying French for a spell, and I know most of the common words, but there are specialty words that I’ve never seen. Like, for instance, where do I get Drywall Mud?

Drywall mud, properly called in the US Drywall Joint Compound, and in Canada simply Joint Compound, is called mud by professionals mainly because that’s what it closely resembles. Other than being plaster white, it could be clay scooped out of a mudpuddle. I’ve used lots of it in Nevada, especially. I even successfully replaced a kitchen wall in a small place we once owned in Arizona. Seriously, you could not tell it was a new wall, with no seams showing and all. (That may give you an idea of how much practice circumstance has forced me to take.) So, when we had the living room door moved over a few feet, I wasn’t worried. In fact, when we had the old radiators and associated pipes removed, I wasn’t worried. I simply looked up “Drywall Joint Compound” in a couple of translation apps (I always like confirmation, and they don’t always agree) I found the word remboulage. Well, remboulage is what you use to patch cracks and holes in walls. So, I headed for the Bricolage, meaning DIY, store, went to the paint department, and found some stuff called, ahem, remboulage It was soft, sort of grey, but it filled holes and so on pretty well so I filled quite a few holes in several walls with it. (The radiator project left some rather large holes.)

That stuff turns into concrete! Have you ever tried sanding concrete? There has to be something better, right? I mean, French houses do use gypsum drywall, and lots of it. Well, the man who moved the door (sounds easy, doesn’t it?) had some white stuff that stirred up just like mud. I asked him and he gave me the brand name. Cool. Back to the same brico for some of that! What they had in that brand name, in the drywall department, was plaster of Paris (Plâtre fin de Paris, to be exact.) Nothing else. Now, Plaster of Paris works as joint compound, except that it sets up in ten minutes. I ended up mixing many batches, which meant climbing up and down a ladder a lot. Good exercise, but . . . And then I ran out of plaster of Paris! So, today I went to the biggest brico in the area, looked in the paint department first, and eh, voila! there was the brand again, but this time with a box of stuff that promised to mix just like plaster of paris, give one half an hour to apply it, and be sandable after 24 hours. If you’ve ever used Mud, that looks familiar. I found MUD! As a bonus, they had some seuil, or threshold, that the other bricos didn’t seem to carry.

But, this is a post about language. The title, spelled correctly, is Parlez-vous français? You see what being unfamiliar with the language and common terms and uses for things gets you? Unnaturally rough looking spots on your wall (still a lot better than radiators and pipes) and quite a bit of bother. Of course, now, I know where to get what I need and what to call it. But I do wonder what else I’m going to have to mess up before I’m familiar enough to stop making stupid mistakes like that. Anybody? Hello?

Categories
France

Learning French?

Computer is still out of order. A fix (I hope) is in the works.

This is a short post intended to be good advice for anyone learning French. This is the advice I’ve received that really has turned out to be solid and valid. The first one may surprise you.

  1. Ignore “the basics.” You learned your first language without knowing that syntax, grammar, verbs, nouns, etcetera, existed. Remember that as you go along.
  2. Figure out a routine and stick with it. Every day I take a lesson or three from Duolingo. You don’t need to use Duolingo, but it is free.
  3. Practice, practice, practice! Seriously!
  4. The most important skill to develop is listening to French! How?

  1. French TV and movies! (Tele et films.) Watch in French and use subtitles, in English at first, but as you learn switch to French subtitles! Do this a lot! Netflix has a lot of programming in French, and you can choose subtitles to suit.
  2. If there is a local chapter of l’alliance français, see if they have events held in French. Prior to Covid19 I regularly attended a breakfast meeting at a French restaurant. It helped a great deal!
  3. If possible, visit a country or province that speaks French. Like France, or Quebec, or, no kidding, New Orleans.

There you go. Doing those things worked for me. I speak French, and bit by bit I’m beginning to understand other people. Both useful skills where I live.

Au revoir!

Categories
France language

Speaking Frankly

See what I did there? Frankly?? I kill me!!! Image is public domain.

I want this blog to be an ongoing discussion/revelation about France, the United States, customs, facts versus rumors, and other things, of course including language. The Frankish language started out as a German dialect, you know, but French is what’s left of it. French is mostly a Latin dialect now (whether Latin died is another discussion entirely) but it is still ten percent Frankish. Words like “Gros” meaning large are just like German! Boy, howdy, huh? I hope to write about French as a language in the future, but for this post, I’m just talking about whether or not they speak French in France. After all, you hear a lot of people say that “they almost all speak English!” Yeah? Here’s a heads up:

THEY SPEAK FRENCH IN FRANCE!

And not everybody here speaks English. And when they do, I find that a lot of times my French, lousy as I know it to be, is better than their English. (I may write about English also, because I pity anyone trying to learn it.) What I’m about to write applies primarily to British, nay, English people. First, let me say that the English people I know are perfectly lovely, and they speak French probably better than I do! That said, there are English people who have lived in France for twenty years (they got special residency status after Brexit so they can stay as long as they wish) and still do not speak any French! And tourists who expect that because they’re spending money in France, French people should speak English! Quoi? Folks, my attitude now is Si j’habite en france, je parle français. This blog is in American English, so here: If I live in France, I speak French. It’s basic courtesy to my hosts. The French actually use a lot of English words, badly from an anglophone point of view. Camping is a place, for example, and so is parking. le camping et le parking. But to ask them to know English just because you spend some money here? Seriously? Plenty of Latino folks spend money in the United States. Do we owe them our speaking Spanish? Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, right?

So, my advice, should you decide to travel to a French speaking country (there are lots of them, some very close to the USA), is to learn enough French to at least be polite. I’ll write a post all about being polite, for now, trust me, you need to be. That is, how to say hello, good-bye, please, and thank-you. Even for people who do speak English, it warms their hearts to hear somebody giving their language a try. You don’t have to be good at it. And, for the love of anything at all, ignore the spelling, but give it a try. It’s amazing how much easier life as a tourist in France becomes for those who speak at least the bare minimum of the local language.

Come to think of it, that applies to any non-English speaking place you visit. A few words of courtesy are not difficult to learn. Do learn them, and you’ll be glad you did!

Okay, end of rant/lecture. I hope this finds you well, and that you find this at least a bit useful. I’ll be back with more observations, in more detail I hope, almost before you know it!

Au revoir!