Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Buying a house in France’ Category

This is a question that many would like to ask but few are brave enough to actually ask it. The answer is different depending on where in France you choose to live.

If you are aiming for a brit-enclave such as Brittany or the Dordogne, the answer is probably “no” as in those areas it’s quite possible to live within the English-speaking community and to rely on those that make their livelihood supporting it. The only potential difficulty is the mayor’s office (“mairie”) but in the majority of cases they will be able to deal with you in English too. There’s no problem with the likes of tax, electricity and the phone company as all three plus similar outfits have at least one office set up to deal with English speakers (and if there is only one office, that office can deal with you where-ever you are).

Outside the brit-enclaves, it’s a different story and, for the most part, you will need to speak French quite well although it is still possible to deal with tax, electricity, etc. via their English speaking branches. Where you will encounter difficulties is in dealing with the plumber, electrician, school and mayor’s office. Even though we speak degree level French we have found that, for example, some electricians refuse to understand us because they simply don’t want to be bothered working for non-French.

If you aren’t English, then you’ll also find that the French are a good deal more willing to speak English to you. One of the shop local assistants claimed not to speak English for almost three years until they found out that we were from Northern Ireland and Australia when they suddenly became quite fluent English speakers.

So, yes, you could move to France and live here without speaking any French. However, in most cases, you’ll find live that little bit easier as your level of French improves.

This is one aspect of French life that is really simple. This is France, so everything is in French.

If you ask an estate agent for accommodation suggestions for a house hunting trip, they will almost always suggest a hotel in the town that their office is in.

As with yourself, there are two aspects of this ie what to do before you come here and what to do after you get here.

In many ways, the hardest part of learning a language is maintaining your fluency.

If you have reached a good level of French before you move, you need to put the effort into maintaining that level of fluency which can often seem like a chore. If possible, you should continue with further courses through, for example, the Open University but if that’s not possible you should at least try to maintain your existing level of spoken and written French. Your current level of fluency will determine how you can go about this. For a basic to intermediate level of French you can subscribe to magazines such as La Vie Outre-Manche and Le Rendez-Vous Français which are available through Concorde French or Champs-Elysées. If your French has progressed further, you could try reading a novel which isn’t nearly such a major undertaking as you might think (see Amazon France) or perhaps buy a French newspaper (Le Figaro is best, Le Monde is a much harder read) which are also available online. For spoken French, Sky has TV5 on the basic subscription; the best programme to watch is the news. By far the best way to maintain your spoken French is to practice it and the Alliance Française classes are wonderful for that.

You might think that you can ignore all the above once you’ve moved to France but that’s usually not the case. In practice, you can find that after the first six months or so (when you use French a lot), you hardly use French at all day to day. To keep your French up you should read the French newspapers and watch French TV whenever possible and don’t reject the idea of further French courses either. The key thing is to keep using your French whenever you can because if you don’t you’ll find that your level of French will drop quite quickly.

Our next installment covers what to do about French for your children.