excuse my French!

“How’s your French?” my friends who don’t live in France ask me. “Fine” I reply. “Fine?” they repeat. “You’re fluent, right?” “Yes”, I say. “So, you must be quite good....?”
Well, truth is - I don’t really know. Shayne tells me I have sloppy grammar and speak like a delinquent from the suburbs, but French people, on hearing I’ve (only?!) been here for 5 years comment on my excellent French. So, who do you believe? Just this morning a Frenchman acted all astounded at how ‘excellent’ (his words) my French apparently is. How I have only the ‘faintest whiff of an accent’ and how Germanic people are obviously gifted at languages....(excuse me? have you heard what Germans do to English and French and any other language you put before their hard-edged palates? Not a pretty sound...)

I think the quality of my spoken French depends on my hormones. And how much quality sleep I’ve had. And how I feel about being in France on any given day. If I’m sad or tired, I can’t even understand a word of what I’m saying. Sometimes I can hear a piercing American accent fly out of my mouth, and sometimes I hack words with German precision.
This mix of “whiffed” accents probably accounts for the slightly mystified look some people get before they say: “Anglaise? Allemande? Ah non - Suedoise!” (English? German? Oh no, Swedish!)

I think the best judge of how good or bad my French is, would probably be Emilie, my long-suffering, infinitely-patient-with-my-hormones writing partner. Hearing me expressing myself (supposedly creatively) in French, is probably teaching her a lot about English and how its grammar is structured. And she’s taught me some cool slang (that even Shayne hadn’t heard before!)