Franglais

Miles Kington I hear you say and his wonderful series of Franglais books published in the 1980s. Not so in this case! For just over a year now I have been organising a French/English conversation group in a local village and we began our new year a couple of weeks ago.

The basic idea is obviously gaining practice in speaking and understanding our mutual languages in a friendly atmosphere. Allied with the former skills the group also improves accent, pronunciation, written and grammar skills and above all gaining confidence in the use of another language. Given regular attendees a superb rapport has grown and now the evenings are as much a social event as a learning one.

The ideal evening is a more or less equal number of both French and English folk seated two by two at tables, that is generally the norm. That is the usual Plan 'A'. Last night some minutes after the due start time I was faced with somewhat of a problem in that there were twelve eager English people and just three French. It will be appreciated that this is somewhat of an imbalance in numbers to the optimum.

Plan 'B' was put into motion - wait a couple of minutes more to see if more Français arrive ...


Hmmm, after said couple of minutes the situation had not improved.

Time for Plan 'C' as matters had degenerated further with the arrival of two more UK expats. Thus a start was made in trying to arrange suitable groupings of four which meant there was a ratio at each table of 3:1 in favour of the expats.

Quick scratch of the head, think on feet, can't let the evening go further downhill. The assembled an eager throng were asked if anyone had any surplus French bods about their persons but sadly was met with a negative response.

Emergency Plan 'Z' was ultimately deployed. Several Anglais, whose French skills are reasonable, were signed up as honorary Français for the duration. Thus the session commenced.

There was a certain confusion at some stages of the evening due to minor unforeseen language difficulties from the honorary number, however the volume of chatter and giggling during the evening seemed to indicate that everyone had enjoyed themselves despite the initial problems. Let's hope that our absent friends find their way back next week to this local seat of learning ...

Having returned home and had a medicinal Armagnac or two I mentally picked through the wreckage of what seemed at the time like a minor train crash. Evidently most if not all had enjoyed the evening, had learnt various facets of each others language and departed happily.

Anyway have any spare French folk stashed away surplus to requirements?