Parlez-vous français ? Oui, mange tout ! Learning French chat.

I've lived here 3 years now, and I've gone from a smattering of 35 year old GCSE grade C French to reading quite well and being able to understand spoken French pretty well. My spoken French is terrible really, entirely due to a lack of confidence.

I don't think you really get a sense of how different the skills of reading, writing and speaking are until you learn another language. Reading, for me at least, seems to take a lot less effort and is relatively easy to pick back up if you take a long break but speaking falls off a cliff if you don't use it regularly.

The confidence or just not thinking too much will only get better if you just continue to speak in French, if someone speaks to you in English just answer in French, no matter how painful it is just plough on. If anyone questions just explain 'j'habite ici maintenant, je dois apprendre la langue'.

I think you might have mentioned that your wife is fluent? So she's probably sorting most stuff out? Don't get me wrong I understand, my Mrs is French so she sorted all the French admin bollocks but I sort out all post office, delivery stuff, I'm taking the kids to school/nursery so talking to the teachers regularly, do all the shopping, basically all the daily admin and we're looking for a gaff to buy so I'm organising the visits with estate agents. I just make my apologies for my shit French at the beginning of the call and crack on.

I bang on loads about doing a course but it really is the way to get over the confidence thing, check out the immigration office (OFII) to see if you qualify for anything, you'd be surprised how much the state offers, even if you have to pay for something they'll at least be the best source of information.

What accent I have picked up is Charentaise so people in Paris probably think I'm a yokel. I need to train myself out of it.

Fuck Parisiens, bunch of cunts anyway.