So living in a foreign country is not without its difficulties. Although english is taught in schools it is not a spoken language here. Instead we have a multitude of local languages (Wolof, Diola, Pul, Serer, Mandinka etc..) and the country’s official langauge (French).
Despite a few years of french at high school my french was very poor when I first arrived but now after two months I can function and have conversations quite happily. (Though it’s no where near perfect).
There are a lot of differences between the french I was taught and the french spoken here which I thought might be interesting to share:
1) people often use ‘on’ instead of ‘nous’. It’s easier to conjugate the verb with this pronoun as it’s the same as il/elle.
2) people pronoun ‘mantenant’ like ‘main-na’.
3) people very rarely use the future tense (sera, ira etc). Instead opting for aller+ infinitive or present tense + a time marker in the future. (Je vais au lycée demain.)
4) people don’t really use please/thank you. When we first got here it seemed a bit abrupt but it is just a cultural difference. It’s perfectly acceptable to just say: Donne moi, M’offere d’eau/ Jox ma, Mai ma ndox. (Give me/ offer me water)
5) Some common mannerisms: It took us forever to work out why people kept saying ‘quoi’ at the end of sentences but it is simply a ‘huh’ or ‘eh’. For example ‘la chaleur, quoi’ just means ‘the heat huh?’. Also lots of people say ‘n’est pas’ at the end of sentences – which just means ‘isn’t it?’. ‘car-même’ is another one we hear all the time at the end of a sentence though I’m not too sure on the exact meaning – it kind of adds emphasis to the statement.
Something to keept in mind while youre learning french: The key to language learning, we tell our students, is confidence to make mistakes. You need to try and use the language as much as possible even if you are not correct 100% of the time. Attempting to express yourself time and time again is the best practice. Try and use the language with your teacher as much as possible!
Thomas In Senegal 