I’ve heard it said that one of the biggest gripes of a language learner is to attempt to string together a simple sentence in a foreign language, only to have the listener reply ‘Do you speak English?’ in English.

This isn’t a problem for me. I don’t seem to run into the English speakers.

In fact, I’ve been guilty of doing it to someone else.

You see, I live near Musée Marmottan in Paris. It’s just across some gardens that are facing my apartment, but that’s really all I knew about it. I spend a lot of time in those aforementioned gardens “playing” as I’m here working as an au pair, and I’d constantly be asked for directions to this Monet museum. At first, I only bothered acquainting myself with the signs indicating the direction to the museum, because wherever I was I could always point to a sign.

Luckily, I stumbled across the actual museum one day in my wanderings, so now I’m pretty much set as a local tour guide.

But one day I was greeted by a group of women as I left my building, who stopped me and launched into all the trappings of what seemed to be a very well-phrased request for directions. I tried not to look too panicked and silently implored that I would know where the place in question was and how to give the directions.

Blah-blah-blah, the lady went on, until she uttered the crucial words – Musée Marmottan – in the thickest American accent I’d ever heard. I don’t know how to convey it in text so you’ll just have to imagine.

I did it. My reply was ‘Do you speak English?’ and all five of us let out a collective sigh of relief and laughed too heartily as a nervous reaction.

Gosh I felt like a little do-gooder that day!