"C'est pas ouis, c'est oui."

For reasons that I haven't gone into and probably won't, I came out to France not speaking much more French than Bonjour. It seemed like a good idea at the time....

I have learnt quite a bit since then and am at that stage where I can understand a lot of what is going on around me but by the time I have formulated what I wanted to say to contribute to the conversation about giving up smoking, everyone has moved onto a different topic and is now discussing the merits of the cotes de rhone 06 over the bordeaux 08. It's wine, drink it!!!

The first French I learnt was market French, we have an amazing street market in Croix Rousse, it really is a gastronomical marvel. I know everyone will get defensive over their particular local markets but the sheer size and breadth of this one has to be seen to be believed. Through listening to other customers, I have learnt to ask for specific weights and measures of different items.

I then signed up for an intensive French course at a local language school and did 10 hours a week for two months. I took in a lot but as I was not using this on a daily basis it didn't become a habit to use. (At the time I was a nanny for an English family)

I then made the easy decision to stay in France and found a job in a bilingual creche. Easy peasy - I am a qualified childcarer and was being employed to speak English to the children. However it has been the place where I have learnt most French and I would like to give a big thanks to the French staff who have patiently listened while I got my tenses muddled up and done their best to understand my accent (which they are now quite complementary off)I still have a way to go, but these girls have given me the confidence to go out into the big wide world and use my beginners French. It is thanks to them that I was able to hold a long conversation in the chemists today about why a particular medicine wasn't working for me.

My other teachers have been the children, a lot of them come from bilingual households and, because we are in France their first language is French. Through them I have seen the way they learn a language more clearly and have been able to apply this to how I learn. Believe me it is so much easier than learning verb tables. I often use expressions were I don't know the literal translation but do know the context and spend hours looking up words in the dictionary and eventually realizing it is two words strung together or spelt differently than I imagined.
I am dyslexic and am now only realizing that it is possible to learn another language when I had struggled at school because teachers were more obsessed about spelling than working out whether I had understood the process or the concept being taught. I now know so much about words and their entomology and how they work together, it is truly an enriching experience, though I am still a long way off playing scrabble for 'fun'.

However, having said all that, it is still, quite hard to take a two and a half year old correcting you for saying 'Ouais' (Yeah) instead of 'Oui' (Yes).