Right from the beginning, the whole point of me moving to France was about language – specifically, learning the French one. However, I’ve learned that moving to Europe to study in a foreign language is never just about one language. It’s about many.
The first thing is that Paris is multilingual. Unlike Australia, where people only speak English and tourists have to do their best approximation to make themselves understood, in Paris it’s all about making yourself understood to the tourists. English is the primary language, of course, but there are people speaking Spanish, Italian, Portuguese…well, pretty much anything that isn’t French that they think will make them money.
Then there are the non-French speakers who live in Paris…well, like me. It’s such a melting-pot, more so than Australia, really, but it’s worth noting that the whole of Australia is a melting-pot. Paris is probably the only place in France that can truly claim that title, but it does it well. Poorly-accented French is mixed in with the languages of all the immigrants and exchange students from around Europe and the world. Walk into any bar on Rue Mouffetard in the 5th and you’ll hear at least one language other than French. This all means that my favourite trick of switching languages when I don’t want to talk to someone is less effective, unless I’m particularly careful in choosing my languages (like German. That works really well).
What really fascinates me is the languages' use in relation to me. When I walk into a tourist shop, for example, looking for presents to send back home, the store owners always greet me and start spruiking their wares in English. Customarily I reply in French, partly ‘cause I’m in France and partly because it’s easier to keep talking and interacting in French, since that's the language that I usually use. The surprise on their faces when they hear my reply is evident – “Vous parlez francais? You speak French?” They assume, since I’m a clean-cut white girl in their souvenir shop, that I’m an ignorant tourist who can’t speak French. I very much enjoy dispelling this stereotype as I explain in fluent French that I live and study in Paris, I’m just looking for something to send home to my best friend/sister/mother, which is why I’m in a shop catering mostly to ignorant non-French-speaking tourists.
Then there’s what happens in other shops. I walk into…a café, a boulangerie, anything, really, and address whomever I need to speak to in French, outlining my order, question, request. They hear the Anglophone accent that I’m told tints my fluent French, and suddenly when they reply they’re speaking English. It’s clear from my vocabulary, syntax, grammar, hell, my confidence, that I speak French pretty damn well, probably far better than a lot of Frenchmen speak English. Yet they seem to assume that as a native English speaker I would rather speak English than French.
People occasionally suggest that it’s because they want to practise their English on me. Sure, that happens sometimes. My « copine » (girlfriend) at the boulangerie gets an occasional laugh from saying stuff to me in English when I show up for my baguettes, and I’m happy to teach the lady at my favourite creperie that it’s pronounced ‘dor-da’ and saying ‘dah-durr’ makes you sound like you just walked out of the American south. But most of them aren’t like this. In the middle of a formal, professional conversation they just switch to English. I wish they wouldn’t. After all, I’m in France, which speaks French, and I clearly speak French. There’s no call to speak English. None at all. But this is the rub of living in a multilingual society like Europe.
D’accord, then.
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