How important is it to learn French?

hi mate, most posts are in english, atm's, banks, document forms, almost all counters speak english, so u dont have to worry about survival, lol, as far as it is!

however, if you wanna hear the market fellows talking, its pretty well a mixup of creole & french!


wish you a happy stay,
islander.

Protoge wrote:

But in all seriousness, how important do you think it is to learn French. Will my life be MUCH easier if I speak some??

I've lived in several countries and I've noticed that sometimes the locals prefer speaking in English to foreigners. Please let me know your thoughts on this subject.

Some locals will certainly enjoy the opportunity to speak English, but some will reply to you in French.  I've lost count of the number of conversations I have had with people where I speak English and they speak French.  It works, but it can be frustrating.

It will certainly do no harm to pick up the language to facilitate dealing with colleagues at work and the locals.

Although the majority of locals can understand and speak english, it will be to your advantage to learn French. Some people don't like speaking english here, for whatever reasons.

It's not a handicap not to know french (like going to China and not knowing how to speak chinese would be), but if you learn french, it will help you to integrate.

My french is pretty terrible lol. I learned it at school like all UK kids but it's only ever good enough to ask a question without understanding the answer! I'm hoping to at least be able to hold a conversation in French if and when I leave MAU. Does anyone know of any podcast type things that one could do? I did one in Italian once and found it really useful.

I could tell from my 2 days experience of Mauritius that French is not essential. But thats not the point is it? I always feel embarrased by UK expats/holidayers that never even try to learn the local language.

Out of interest, how different is Mauritiun French to 'French French'? For example in the UK, there are several regions I cannot understand even though we are speaking the same language lol!

Strawb wrote:

Out of interest, how different is Mauritiun French to 'French French'? For example in the UK, there are several regions I cannot understand even though we are speaking the same language lol!

I depends who you are speaking to:)

Some Mauritians can speak what the french refer to as Parisian French. It's just like in Britain, someone from London and someone from wales don't speak the same way; here some people throw in creole and english when speaking french. Overall, I don't think it depends on which part of Mauritius you are from; it's just how often you practise speaking the language and how fluently you can speak it!