Bonjour Amis de FDU,
J’ai une petite histoire à reporter. Je dois la raconter en anglais, à cause de mon niveau de français vraiment limite.
When I used to live here in Sydney (2000-2003), I reckon I met about two French people in the whole time I was here, and I rarely, if ever, heard your beautiful language spoken in the streets. Since coming back to Sydney in February, I hear French spoken everywhere, I mean just about every day. Fantastic.
Last week I decided that I had to take advantage of this new phenomenon. I decided that whenever I heard some French people in the street, and circumstances were appropriate, I would say something in French to start a conversation with them, mainly to give me the opportunity to practise my French, but also because travellers tend to enjoy meeting the locals. Voila.
Well, last night gave me the opportunity to put my new commitment into practise. I was on the bus into the city when two girls in their early twenties hopped on and sat opposite me, and joy of joys, they were speaking French to each other. So, remembering my commitment to practise my French whenever possible, I put on my friendliest smile, politely waited for a pause in their conversation, then piped up with:
“C’est jolie d’entendre le français en Australie”. (avec
)
Now what I expected was a couple of returned smiles and a pleasant conversation for the next two minutes until we reached Town Hall, with them saying things like “Tu viens d’ou?” and “Mais tu parles bien”. Instead what I got, with the most forced smiles, was “Oui”. They then proceeded to conduct a halting conversation in hushed tones until we arrived at Town Hall a somewhat painful 90 seconds later.
As I say, this was not the reaction I expected, and I spent the next several hours wondering why a little light banter had not followed my friendly and welcoming gesture. And I came up with a happy conclusion.
I decided that the girls did not engage in conversation with me because they were convinced, so authentic has my French accent become, that I was not a typical friendly Australian gent but in fact a wayward Frenchman trying to
…..les dragger!
So for the next day or so I wandered around feeling unusually proud of myself, convinced that I had made such progress with my conversation partners that I sounded like a real French person. Bon! When I next met up with one of them, I gleefully told him my story and asked him to confirm my theory.
Sadly, Jean then proceeded to shatter my illusion and explained to me that my French was not yet native-sounding, not by a long way, and a French person would probably not have used the words I used, and the girls would have known straight away that I was not French. He explained, chuckling to himself all the while, that there were some differences between Australian and French societies that were responsible for the girls’ rejection of my attempt to start an entirely innocent conversation. Being in a state of shock at the time I have forgotten most of what he said, but it centred on the French social constraint that one simply does not start a conversation with a total stranger on a bus in a big city, or indeed any public place, especially if you are a girl.
OK, ce que je veux savoir, FDUers, should I try to engage you in light conversation when I hear French spoken around the place, or should I mind my own business and listen to my iPod instead?
Over to you.
Phil
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