Beginning French for Travelers

Many guide books and all phrase books have a brief but workable explanation of how to pronounce and a collection of useful expressions for tourists. I prefer Berlitz.

Don't worry about perfection. The worse your accent, the more successful you will be because almost everybody you deal with will speak English better than you speak French and the whole point of your starting every conversation in fractured French is to show you don't have an attitude and then to get the French to switch to English, which they are more than happy to do, although I don't if it is because they are being helpful or feeling superior.
As it happens, I can't carry on a conversation French, but I pronounce it nearly perfectly. This has several times caused me to get into arguments with, as I recall, cops, waiters, and hotel desk clerks who insist that I do speak French when I tell them I don't. And then there was border security who questioned my having an American Passport because "Americans can't speak French, but you do."
The French say that to the extent I have an accent, its German. The Germans say I have a French accent.

Its helpful to memorize a few phrases like:

There is a reservation for (your name).

Learn how to say please and thank you in French and do it a lot.

Do you have a table for x people? This is more efficient than saying We would like a table for x people because Do you have in French is a simple "Avez-vous"

The most essential sentence: Avez-vous un WC (or toilett)? (where is the rest room?) note the connotation of this expression. It assumes 1] they have a rest room and 2] you can use it. This makes it harder for them to say no.

Should they not switch into English after you stumble through a French sentence or two, your options to change to English are to say 1] Je nais comprende pas Francaise (I don't understand French. For the reasons described above, I prefer this to 2] Je nais parl pas Francaise (I don't speak French) or 3] Parley vous Anglaise? (do you speak English?), or 4] just start talking in English.

It looks like Rick Steves’ Europe is having another Beginning French for Travelers class at the travel center in Edmonds coming up on July 6th so maybe you can contact them for it or even swing by that event and see if they’re giving out similar sheets.

oo cet trove le toilette, s'il vous plais?

35 years ago heading for Italy I got a tape cassette for the car with 'getting by in Italian'. the philosophy of that tape has since served me well in travels many places. You don't need sentences. You need politeness phrases and then a few directional words and the noun. e.g. bon jour. Toilette? sil vous plait? I once found a bakery in Chartres by noticing a woman with baguette under her arm at the butcher shop where I was buying pate by the point and gesture method. I said 'bon jour'. then pointed to her baguette and said 'ooo ayy, seel voo play'. she immediately sized up my competence in French and so went to the door and made walky fingers this way and that. I went out the door and walked in the 3 directions she had gestured -- to the left then right then left and voila, there was a bakery. You don't need 'if you please, could you direct me to the nearest metro station'. 'bon jour, metro??? sil vous plait' will get it most of the time.

You can get by with very little if you have the politeness words. And these days you can always use your phone to give you the needed phrase before starting an interaction and if desperate show or play the thing to the person you are asking for help.

Hi Carolyn, I’ll be taking the RS French language class in a few weeks. Send me your email by PM, and I’ll send you the info after the class.

Hi Carolyn -

Awhile back they recorded one of the Edmonds' sessions for beginning French, found here on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYO7snTI5oY

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There's also an equivalent (session) for Spanish, Italian and German for those interested.

Thank you everyone for the help and advice!!!!

If you are going to Paris, don’t bother. They can spot an American from six blocks away and are much more interested in practicing their English than indulging your French. Nothing snooty about it. Just the way it is. More efficient for everyone.

Elsewhere, a guidebook-level grasp of basic phrases will probably suffice.

Please note that I say this as someone who spent eight months recovering my long-buried high school and college French classes—and making substantial progress beyond that—and was somewhere between disappointed and frustrated by how little opportunity I had to use my hard-won skills. (There was more opportunity in Provence than in Paris.). I don’t regret one minute of the time I spent studying, and I plan to continue doing so. But I think one needs to get outside the tourism/hospitality realm most of us will inevitably inhabit to be able to really engage with the French in French.

Hi Carolyn, I received your email and will send it Saturday after the class.

My suggestion is that if you are going to France acquire as much of language as possible, work on the accent and build up the knowledge on phrases and expressions.

My favorite method is hauling around my grandson who just finished a year in Paris studying French.

Politeness and honest effort are appreciated and I was able to have successful transactions with non English speakers even though my French is pitiful and practically non-existent. Two years of high school French helped, but that was 50 years ago.