I’m off to la belle province — specifically, Quebec City — for a few days, so have been brushing up a bit on my high school French in preparation: not because I’m worried I won’t find people who speak English, but because it’s been my experience that when visiting a place where English is not the default language, trying to speak a little of the native tongue can go a long way (and even prevent a disaster).
I first realized this when I visited Paris in 1983 as part of a school trip to England, France, and Holland. My high school French classes were only a couple of years behind me at that point, so I was more comfortable with (and conversant in) the language than I am now. Even if that had not been the case, however, I would still have tried my best to use French where possible, because I quickly found that doing so was appreciated by the people I was speaking with, and made them more likely to a) try to help me and b) switch to English if they knew it.
A lot of unilingual English speakers probably don’t appreciate how fortunate we are that our one language is widely known (or at least understood) almost everywhere we happen to go. Indeed, some people can get rather arrogant about it, such as a unilingual parent chaperone who was on that 1983 trip. We had all just visited the Louvre, and were boarding our two buses in preparation for heading to Holland. As we settled in, the woman began complaining about the fact that some of the signs had been in French only, with no English translation.
The way she said it indicated that she considered this state of affairs little short of a personal affront. When I asked mildly what language she expected the signs to be in — considering the fact that we were, after all, in France — she merely sniffed loudly and directed her gaze out the window. If she found any deficiencies in the extent of the English available in Amsterdam, she kept silent about it.
I’m not saying one has to immerse oneself in a foreign language for months before a trip, but learning a few key words — hello, goodbye, please, thank you — and a handful of phrases is a good start (as far as phrases go, “How much is that?” and “Where is the closest toilet?” are probably sound choices). It’s certainly better than saying something in English, not being understood, and then repeating yourself in English, only slower and louder, in the hope that this will magically make your listener understand (hint: it won’t).
I was able to witness this at first hand during that 1983 trip, when our buses pulled away from the Louvre. There had been a change to our plans, inasmuch as two of the people with us needed to be picked up elsewhere before we headed for Amsterdam, but as I watched the Eiffel Tower recede into the distance I realized that someone had failed to communicate this fact — in any language — to our drivers, and that we were on the way to Holland minus two passengers.
I relayed this information to Mr. Kennedy, a bluff, Irish-born geography teacher whose English was colourful and whose French was non-existent, as I quickly found when he tried to explain the situation to our driver by yelling at him in English, then yelling at him a lot louder. Realizing that this was unlikely to lead to a linguistic breakthrough, I took a deep breath and — slowly and clearly, but in French — explained the situation to the driver.
Was my French fluent, elegant, and grammatically correct? Absolutely not. Did it provide the driver with a good laugh? Probably. Did it get the job done and explain our situation before we crossed the Belgian border? Yes. Did I learn some new French swear words? Definitely.
Hence my attempts to brush up on our other official language before I head to Quebec City: I doubt I’ll need to explain to a bus driver why we can’t leave Paris, but you never know. For now, à bientôt!
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