Mihir Jaiswal's Blog, page 10

Do French Speak English?

What an unusual question to ask! Still it was forced into mymind few months ago. I never asked whether American speak Italian or Englishspeak French, but I wondered whether French speak English. The reason, I was toembark on my vacation to France.

After completing my visa procedure and confirming my ticketsand itinerary, I declared happily about my upcoming vacation. My friends andcolleagues were happy with one warning: “People are not nice there.”Surprisingly, hardly any of them had ever been to France and yet they hadconfidence in their second hand information. The most common argument for theirwarning was French people did not speak English. It was like judging a golfplayer based on his Flamenco dancing skills.

Charles de Gaulle, being an international airport, had all English-speakingofficers. However, directions and signs were not all in English. I thought,probably, my friends were not completely wrong. As soon as I walked out ofsecure area, several taxi drivers flocked around me, quite a change from USA,but not so much from India. One of them, based on how non-French I looked,started speaking in English to me. “Eifel tower? Which hotel?” He guessed rightthat I was a tourist. I knew I had to take the metro and ignored the taxidriver. He then followed me and spoke a few statements in French. English andFrench, both spoken fluently by the first person I met in Paris. He didn’t stopthere, he spoke in Spanish and finally in Arabic, again fluently, to try andget business out of me. Wow! I looked at him wide eyed and asked, “Where is themetro station?” He disappointedly gave me the right directions and led me to anelevator leading two floors down, from where I could catch the metro.

Recovering from the multilingual French discovery, I went tothe information counter and found a strictly French speaking man. I startedwith saying “Bonjour!” and quickly shifted to English after that. He made aneffort with the sign language and little English he knew to guide me successfullyto the ticket counter and metro platforms. My first two experiences in Pariswere quite different from the warnings.

For the next two days, I went to many places in Paris fromEifel Tower to the Louvre and from Notre Dame to the Petit Palais. I did facedifficulty with the language. Yes, I did. Nonetheless, not with the communication!After spending two days in Paris, I spent rest of the week in a small villagenamed Presilly on the French Alpes. Finding English-speaking people was harderand harder as I moved away from Paris. However, I felt more and more at home. Stereotypicaljudgment was completely missing in those villages and small towns. Afterspending years in USA, that was a pleasant experience.

After nine days of fun, adventure and other worldlyexperience, I was at the Charles de Gaulle airport again, sad but satisfied.One last French interaction remained, at the immigration counter of theairport. Interestingly, I was the only one waiting in the line. I was calledover by a characteristically French gentleman sitting on the opposite side ofthe immigration counter. In his forties, he had a stern look of an officer.“Bonjour!” I said approaching the counter and handed over my passport. For asecond he didn’t look at me. After looking at my passport, the officer lookedup, smiled, and said, “Namaste!” Forget English, he spoke to me in Hindi.Looking at him, he was probably a hundredth generation Frenchman and yet hespoke in Hindi.

In the end, the assumption that French were not nice becausethey didn’t speak English was false. Many Americans don’t speak a second language.Even though many French didn’t speak a second language they were accommodating,pleasant and welcoming. I will visit France again and again and again.

Till then au revoir!