A Frenchwoman in Greater London

When I recently reached the 10 year-mark of my life in the UK, I looked back at how things evolved from what they were when I first arrived.




I was fresh out of university (to be accurate, a business school in France), had always had top marks and never-ending praises from teachers in English, and had never really spent any significant amount of time in an English-speaking country. Naively, I thought that if I had always been top of the class throughout high school and further education in English, then surely working in the UK was going to be a doddle (even if I didn't know that particular word back then - 'doddle').

So finally here I come to an 'Anglo-Saxon' country from the top of my 21 years old, feeling like I was going to conquer the world.




I arrived in August, to what seemed like a very cold and rainy autumn, with completely unsuitable summer clothing. My commute to work involved a short train journey from Wembley station, and in the sleepiness of the early mornings, as I waited for my trains in the middle of the cold and draughty old station, with damp wind gushing through my bones and all the Asian faces around me (in France, foreign faces are seldom Indian-looking, but rather Chinese or African), I truly wondered whether actually I accidentally took a trip to a strange unknown developing country instead.




Soon I worked out that I really could not understand what people were saying. 'This really isn't like in the American films I have been watching or any of the videos that my English teachers have been using to improve our listening comprehension' I used to think, 'what language are they speaking here?'.

First of all, when I was introduced to people, they were making this strange noise which reminded me of kung fu films, and that was making me jump back in surprise and fear. I later worked out that British people greet each other with an enthusiastic and high-pitched 'Hiya!!' when they are friendly with you.

I asked people to repeat themselves a lot, and in the first month, it didn't matter how many times that was, I still didn't get what they said. I got so frustrated that sometimes, I just walked away.

Many a time, I would have a Scottish, Irish or South African person on the phone, and the conversation was just ridiculous: I could not understand the numbers they were saying - I couldn't decide whether to burst into a hysterical laugh or to cry at how difficult this was.




Although my spoken English was formal and not at all idiomatic, people used to understand me very well. So I would end my phone conversations at work with 'could you confirm what we discussed in a fax please?'

As for a lot of French people, my reading comprehension was miles better than my listening comprehension.

I was very determined to improve very quickly - I simply could not cope with that much frustration for long - and soon my little vocabulary notepad was full of useful words and expressions which I conscientiously memorised and tried to use again.




One of my colleagues was a young and tall rugby player who used to tease me by saying that this is the best country in the world because it is GREAT Britain. I used to overload him with my language questions, to which he would sometimes respond amicably in characteristic English humour 'Bloody foreigner!'. It reminded me to occasionally pause in my continuous and intense quest to conquer the English language to laugh at comical situations and take in the progress I had made.




In Chinese education, your parents tell you that if you work hard enough, you can do anything. And sure enough, after much hard work and persistence through many frustrating and comically ridiculous situations, I started to be able to understand people quite well, express myself in a more idiomatic way, and managed to have fluent conversations at a decent level within 4 or 5 months.




Things stepped up when I had a sentimental relationship with an Englishman. He was a bit of a lad, had left school at 16, yet managed to climb up the corporate echelons through good business skills, and favoured slang and idiomatic expressions to formal words. In our first interactions, I had no idea what he was talking about, even if I understood every word. What on earth does 'doing my head in' mean? Or 'making things up'? Or even 'working things out'?

I learnt to speak like a true native.




A few years later, I found myself in Yorkshire for the majority of the working week, working on projects for my company. It was a step back in my ability to understand people, but by then I was used to having to work hard from an uncomfortable start to reach my goals. I even picked up a slight Northern accent, and when ringing my cousin in London one day, got told that she spent a few seconds wondering 'who is this northern girl ringing me?'




The best milestone was when I first found myself reading books in English seamlessly, without stopping to check the dictionary after every paragraph.




Fast forward to 10+ years after my first arrival. I still learn words and expressions from time to time, although I no longer carry a notepad with me everywhere. Sometimes they are simple words I just never came across in the past. Recently I had to ask my friend's daughter 'what's a stitch?' (I had worked out we were not talking about the sewing or the laughing kind). Funnily, this is probably very revealing of the fact that I hardly ever run!




Mostly I enjoy being able to fully understand what people mean, what they refer to, with all of the nuances that their choice of words and tone express, not just the general meaning.

It makes me able to understand the English culture and to integrate by saying the right things at the right time (or trying at least), respond to a joke appropriately, and build trust with friends and credibility with colleagues.




This will probably sound like self-flattery, and I know that my written English is still far from being perfect, but I would just like to mention that many new people I meet nowadays tell me that they thought I was born or at least raised in the UK. What a wonderful compliment to have for those efforts throughout the years! I feel very proud of that achievement.




From time to time I will have a dumb day where words just don't come in English at all - they are a mixture of French or Chinese. And conversely, when I return to my home town, I sometimes realise that I am constructing sentences in an English way and that it just doesn't sound right in French. My sister usually politely laughs and kindly corrects me.




Learning to speak a foreign language fluently is one of the hardest yet one of the most rewarding endeavours that I have ever engaged in. It has brought a lot of richness in my life, not only the ability to fully understand people in the country I live in, but also the ability to fully integrate in it and to completely feel at home here.




Today I just feel that the UK is my loved and loving, welcoming adopted country.


What is your experience of expatriation?