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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Language dilemmas: How can I stop French people switching to English?

Some people might be relieved when English is spoken, but it can be frustrating if you're keen to try out your French. We asked French language expert Camille Chevalier-Karfis for some tips to stop this happening.

Published: 29 December 2020 14:41 CET
Updated: 6 July 2021 16:21 CEST
Language dilemmas: How can I stop French people switching to English?
Tourist hotspots are not the best places to try out your French. Photo: AFP

It’s far from an uncommon scenario; you’ve asked a question in what you think is pretty good French only for the French person to notice your accent and instantly switch into English.

And while communication might be easier like this, it can be frustrating if you have been studying hard and want to try out what you have learned.

French language expert and founder of French Today Camille Chevalier-Karfis explains some of the reasons that this happens.

1. Don’t take it personally

As nervous language learners we tend to assume that this happens because our accent is terrible or we have made dreadful errors of grammar but it’s equally likely that this isn’t about you at all.

As excited as you are to show off your French, the person that you’re talking to might be equally excited to show off their English, or might just want the opportunity to practice or brush up their language skills. Most French children learn English at school and increasingly younger people watch box sets in English so plenty of people are keen to talk to a genuine Anglophone.

Camille says: “It’s a French habit to be polite and try to help people out, and we do also have a bit of a tendency to show off, so it may be that the person you’re speaking to wants to show off how good their English is.

“But I think the big difference is that French people tend to be more blunt and opinionated. If you don’t want to speak English they would expect you to say that and don’t really understand why you would be upset but say nothing about it.”

READ ALSO Understand Spoken French Pronunciation (with audio recordings)

2. Just ask

Which brings us to the second point – if you want to speak French then ask the person if you can.

Here are some suggestions for a polite request

J’étudie le français et j’aimerais parler français avec vous – I am studying French and I would like to speak French with you

Je préfère parler en français – I would prefer to speak in French 

Je suis venu spécialement en France pour parler français – I came to France specifically to speak French

C’est gentil de m’aider avec mon français – It’s very kind of you to help me with my French

Camille says: “Also, be careful using je ne comprends pas as that really means that you haven’t understood anything that the person has said, so they are likely to switch to English if they can. If you have just missed a word or a phrase you can say je ne comprends pas tout – I haven’t understood everything (but I did get most of it).

You can also ask someone Pouvez-vous parler plus lentement/plus fort – could you speak slower/speak up?

READ ALSO Language dilemmas: Why can’t I understand what French people say?

3. Pick the right time and place

Camille says: “You need to recognise that not every French person has the time to be your personal language tutor. If you are in Paris in August in a busy tourist café it will almost certainly be quicker for the waiter to switch to English to take your order and if he’s busy that is probably what he will do.

“It’s not a comment on you or your language skills, it’s just practical.”

How much English is spoken to you will probably also depend on where you are.

Staff in tourist destinations generally speak at least some English and it’s more common in the big cities like Paris than in small towns and rural France. As a generalisation, younger people are more likely to speak English than the older generation of French people.

4. Give yourself a break

It’s easy to feel judged but you need to remember that learning a language is hard.

You shouldn’t expect to be instantly fluent and you will certainly make mistakes so it’s best to learn to laugh at yourself when you fall into one of the many traps that the French language lays out for unwary foreigners (for example un baiser is a kiss, baiser is the verb to fuck. Don’t get those the wrong way round!)

Camille says: “As you are still learning you will not be able to fully represent yourself in French, stuck with a more basic vocabulary you will find it harder to show your intelligence or your sense of humour. That’s OK, you are still learning.”

Camille Chevalier-Karfis is a French language expert, and founder of FrenchToday.com. Do you have a language dilemma for Camille? Email [email protected]

Member comments

  1. Btw. this article kind of answers the question: How do I get French people to speak English? In my experience the best way is for me to continue rambling on in my broken French and suddenly every person who previously said that they couldnt speak English will find these skills again in their brain.

  2. Humm – In Alsace there are very few English speakers. You couldn’t survive here if you don’t speak French…

  3. The article misses a crucial point. It is often not that someone recognizes the accent as English, American, Singaporean, etc. It is because they recognize it is simply not a native French speaker. Since English is now the unofficial second language of, at least, Europe, it is only natural to switch to that. And why not. Go to any multi-national gathering: Trade Fair, symposium, lecture, etc., and you will hear most people speaking English together. Even when none are native speakers. I.e. l’auberge espagnol.

  4. I visit every year and I am trying to learn more french each and every year. This in and of itself, letting people know you want to learn, is very important. If something like this happens I will continue to try to speak french, and they will continue to speak english. It looks very funny to some people as they will coment! But we both are trying to show respect for each other and learn at the same time. If either of us comes up with something we do not understand, or in my case mispronounce! we will stop and talk about that. One thing I have learned is to NEVER speak french canadian! That will draw all sorts of responses, most not very polite!

  5. Here’s the phrase I use: “Ah, on critique les Américains en disant que nous ne parlons sinon l’anglais, mais chaque fois que je parle français, on veut me répondre en anglais. Alor, faut pas nous critiquer …”

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LEARNING FRENCH

Is the English language really just ‘badly pronounced French’?

A French linguist has been making waves with his boldly titled book 'The English language does not exist - it's just badly pronounced French', but does the professor actually have a point?

Published: 23 April 2024 14:35 CEST
Updated: 28 April 2024 14:39 CEST
Is the English language really just 'badly pronounced French'?

The French linguist Bernard Cerquiglini is clear that the title of his book should be taken with humour and a pinch of salt, beginning his work by explaining that it is a ‘bad faith proposition’.

Clearly, the English language does exist and equally clearly the French are a little uneasy about it – with numerous laws, national bodies and local initiatives attempting to fight back against the anglicisms that now litter everyday speech, from ‘c’est cool’ to ‘un job’. 

But Cerquiglini argues that the supposed ‘influx’ of English words that are now used in France, especially tech-related terms, is nothing compared to what happened when French literally invaded English in the Middle Ages.

And the close similarity that the two languages enjoy today – around 30 percent of English words are of French origin – speaks to this entwined history.

“You can also see my book as an homage to the English language, which has been able to adopt so many words… Viking, Danish, French, it’s astonishing,” he told AFP.

The history

The key date in the blending of English and French is the Norman conquest of 1066, when Duke William of Normandy invaded England with a small group of Norman knights and made himself the English king William the Conqueror.

What happened next was a radical re-ordering of society in which English nobles were displaced and William’s knights were installed as a new French-speaking (or at least Norman-speaking) ruling class. 

The use of French by the ruling classes continued into the 13th and 14th centuries, by which time French was the official language of the royal courts, diplomacy, the law, administration and trade – meaning that ambitious English people had no choice but to learn French in order to take part in official or legal processes. 

Cerquiglini says that half of all English’s borrowings from French took place between 1260-1400, with a heavy slant towards words related to nobility, trade, administration or the law.

But a large group of non-native speakers meant that the French spoken in England was already starting to evolve, and the French words ended up with different pronunciations or even a different meaning. 

As early as 1175, the records show a Frenchman in England snootily remarking that: “My language is good, because I was born in France”. 

English and French started to part ways from the mid-1400s, by which time the two countries no longer shared royalty (the last English possession in France, the port of Calais, was lost to the French in 1558) and gradually systems such as the law courts and trade began to be conducted in English.

French remained widely spoken as a second language by the nobility and the elite right up until the early 20th century and French is still the most widely-taught language in UK schools.

The similarities

It’s not always easy to distinguish between English words that have a French root and those that have a Latin root, but linguists estimate that around 29 percent of English words come from French, another 29 percent from Latin, 26 percent from German and the rest from other languages.

But many of the English words that do have a clear French root are related to nobility, administration, politics and the law.

For example the French words gouvernement, parlement, autorité and peuple are clearly recognisable to English speakers. Likewise budget, revenus, enterprise and taxe, plus avocat, cour, juge, magistrat and evidence.

Amusingly, the French and the English obviously found time to share many insults, including bâtard [bastard], crétin, imbecile, brute and stupide.

Adaptation

But most of the people in England who were speaking French did not have it as their mother tongue, so the language began to adapt. For example the French à cause de literally translates into English as ‘by cause of’ which over time became the English word ‘because’.

There are also words that started out the same but changed their meaning over time – for example the English word ‘clock’ comes from the French ‘cloche’ (bell), because in the Middle Ages church bells were the most common method of keeping track of the time for most people.

When the mechanical clock began to appear from the 14th century onwards, the French used a new term – une horloge – but the English stuck with the original.

The differences

One of the big differences between English and French is that English simply has more words – there are roughly 170,000 words in the English language, compared to about 135,000 in French.

And at least part of this comes from English being a ‘blended’ language – that English people hung on to their original words and simply added the French ones, which is why you often get several different English words that have the same translation in French eg clever and intelligent both translate into French as ‘intelligent’.

Another difference represents the class divide that the Norman invasion imposed between the French nobles and the English labourers.

For example the words pig and cow both have Anglo-Saxon roots, while pork and beef come from French (porc and boeuf) – so when the animal is in the field being looked after by English peasants it has an Anglo-Saxon name, but by the time it is on the plate being eaten by posh people, it becomes French.

There’s also a tendency in English for the more everyday words to have Anglo-Saxon origins while the fancier words have French origins – eg to build (English) versus to construct (French). In French construire is used for both. Or to feed (English) versus to nourish (French) – in French both are nourrir.

Faux amis

One consequence of English and French being so closely linked in the bane of every language-learner’s life – les faux amis (false friends).

These are words that look and sound very similar, but have a completely different meaning. If you don’t know the French word for something you can have a stab at saying the English word with a French pronunciation – and often you will be right.

But sometimes you will be wrong, and sometimes it will be embarrassing.

READ ALSO The 18 most embarrassing French ‘false friends’

Often, faux amis are words that have changed their meaning in one language but not the other – for example the French word sensible means sensitive, not sensible – which is why you can buy products for peau sensible (sensitive skin).

But it once meant sensitive in English too – for example in the title of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility – over time the meaning of the English word adapted but the French one stayed the same.

The title

And a word on that title – La langue anglaise n’existe pas, C’est du français mal prononcé (the English language does not exist, it’s just badly pronounced French) is actually a quote from former French prime minister Georges Clemenceau.

He did apparently speak English, but doesn’t appear to have been very fond of England itself – his other well-known quote on the topic is: “L’Angleterre n’est qu’une colonie française qui a mal tourné” – England is just a French colony gone wrong.  

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