What does that have to do with me. Well....it's been 2 months here in the Aveyron. 5 week of my french class in the village (2x a week - 3 hours per class). I also took french in the states for 2 1/2 years (1 day a week for 1 hour), but it was really hard to practice in Los Angeles.
When I first arrived here I was a bit shy about speaking. But now I just go for it. I love being corrected, it's a great way to learn and the french are so nice to me even though I fumble with their language. But one thing I have noticed lately is that I'm starting to speak "franglais". I'll be rattling off a sentence and then not remember 1 word and so I throw in the English word. Now it's cool when I'm speaking to someone who also speaks English, but most of the time they don't and they just look at me like I'm nuts and sometimes I really don't even notice I'm doing it. It just flows out so easily. I think I'm fluent in Franglish!
So, Franglish is a portmanteau combining the French words "français" ("French") and "anglais" ("English"), and it is a slang term for an interlanguage, although the word has different overtones in French and English.
In English, (Franglish) usually consists of either filling in gaps in one's knowledge of French with English words, using false cognates with their incorrect meaning or speaking French in such a manner that (although ostensibly "French") would be incomprehensible to a French-speaker who does not also have a knowledge of English (for example, by using a literal translation of English idiomatic phrases).
Some examples of Franglish are:
Longtemps, pas voir. – Long time, no see.
Je vais driver downtown. – I'm going to drive downtown.
Je suis tired. – I am tired.
Je ne care pas. – I don't care.
J'agree. – I agree.
I have never used the examples above. But I would do something like this:
"demain, vous descendons au village pour voir si nous pouvons trouver quelques RUGS pour le FLOOR"
I didn't know the word for RUGS - couvertures or the word for FLOORS - le plancher
the sentence reads: "tomorrow, we are going to the village to see if we can find some rugs for the floors"
Now if you knew french and english you'd get what I'm saying, but if you were french you would have NO idea what the hell RUG or le FLOOR (like if I put a "le" in front of the english word they will magically know what I mean) is. So then I have to describe with my hands what I'm trying to say. I'm not sure this is normal for someone in a foreign country learning the language, but it is for me, I'm embarrassed to say.
