Question #3 for Foreigners: Did you speak French before you came to France?/Where did you learn French?

I have been working in French for several years now, plus I also studied in France (one year in Montpellier, one year in Toulouse), which means I've both had lots of time to improve my French and also specific reasons for needing to have the best possible French. My job requires answering the phone and writing emails in French throughout the day, so having good French is both a requirement and an advantage.

So when people learn that I was not born French (naturalized!!) and do not have a French parent they are usually surprised because I do not have much of an accent and have a large vocabulary (thank you French major required readings).

I started learning French in 8th grade and then continued in high school, although I did not take French senior year because I spent the summer after junior year in Strasbourg and could not take a summer school class to open the space in my schedule. I kept up my French reasonably well by studying at home and I got a respectable 3 on the AP French test.

Then I was a French major and took one French class each semester. I spent my junior year abroad, during which I met my future husband, and stayed during the summer to do an internship. I went back to the US to finish my degree, then came back as a language assistant.

As far as Americans in France goes, I think it's a relatively common story: I started learning French in the US, came to France to improve it, met someone and stayed and kept on improving my language skills.

After I briefly explain that I started learning French in middle school and continued through university, I usually get some variation "Oh but Jane Birkin (or someone else) still had an accent years after moving to France! It's really amazing you don't have much of an accent".

Then I usually say something about getting tired of telling my life story each time I opened my mouth in a shop during my year in Montpellier because someone wanted to know where I was from. Coming from California it gets old hearing French people talk about how they went to San Francisco for vacation and how great it was (San Francisco is nice, but it's as close to where I grew up as Brussels is to Toulouse).

I also worked hard on my French because I found that an accent and mistakes undermine your authority with children. If you're yelling at them to behave with a thick accent they usually find it hilarious.

I think this question is ultimately a reflection of the average French person's weak foreign language skills: "My English is weak; how come your French is so good?". A lot of French people had more years of English than I did of French at school, but they can only hold a basic conversation with significant grammatical mistakes and a significant accent. Or if they have a decent level, they are often too embarrassed to use it.

Seeing as how I don't really enjoy repeating how I learned French, I will try turning the question around the next time I receive it. Something like "I started learning French in middle school, which is when you must have started English. How many years did you end up studying English?" I don't know if people will be deceived by my skirting the issue, but it's worth a try.