How integrated into the local culture do you want to be?
I read an article a while back in the Connexion about integrating yourself into French society and one piece of advice was to speak French to the kids and ban English TV which set me thinking.
That’s the path to full integration into French society for your children and, to a lesser extent, for yourself. However, before starting down that path it’s best to consider what the result might be, say, 20 years down the line.
The most obvious aspect of that approach will be that your children won’t be able to speak English unless they can already speak it and even then, depending on their current age, their fluency in English may drop off substantially. For example, a child that is five years old when you move will only ever speak like a five year old at best and, if you’re very strict about not using English, probably not even as well as that.
The effect of this approach is to rob your kids of the chance of being bilingual. Moreover, it’s strategy that is trying to be “more French than the French” because a growing number of the French are finding that speaking English is an advantage in todays world. OK, France as a country may not like that situation, but that’s the reality.
As well as the obvious effect on their language, this approach also robs your children of knowing about your culture. In effect, they will grow up to be French rather than British/French and to them the UK will be a foreign country. Whether you think that a bad thing or a good thing it’s something that you should think about now rather than years down the line as many people tend to.
But what about you? How integrated do you want to be? You might think that even if you watch French TV constantly, read French papers, etc. that you won’t lose your English. Well, it’s true that it’s unlikely that you’ll lose it but it will become dated. For example, consider if you’d moved in 1988. How much has the UK changed since Thatcher? You don’t fully understand French taxation now I’m sure, but with a 20 year gap, would you understand UK taxation? I think not. Scotland didn’t have it’s own government then but it could even be a separate country in 20 years time: how much would that change UK culture? Even if you’d left as little as ten years ago, chances are you’d not know the English terms for e-mail and the like and be quoting your Minitel address to people. But you get the idea – the longer that they are out of touch with UK life, the more it will seem like a foreign country.
Whilst you may love the French culture and have moved to France to live it, you need to consider whether or not you want your children to actually be French. Being French means that your own country will be foreign to them. They may even grow up unable to speak to their grandparents. Don’t forget too that this can happen quite quickly if your children are young and that many people return home after several years. For your children that may no longer be “home” and you could find that they need to go into remedial English classes before they can even go to school.
So how French do you want to be? How French do you want your children to be? How French do you want your grandchildren to be?
They’re not easy questions to answer, but you should think about them.
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