Fluent

Fluent (Eng.)/ Fluent (Fr.) adjective: (of a person) able to express oneself easily and articulately.

The first question that people ask me about living in France is, "How long have you lived here?" My answer is a shameful 2.5 years. Shameful because of the answer to the natural follow up question.

"How is your French?"

Sigh.

I have a pretty extensive repository of French vocabulary words. But my verb conjugation and sentence composition is atrocious, and has led me to some very uncomfortable situations. Like the time I thought I was scheduling a time to test drive a used car that was for sale. Only to find out that I had inadvertently invited the car's owner to a Sunday afternoon orgy.

Marco says that I need to focus on learning a phrase a day. I think one per week is probably more like it. Regardless, I see his point. At least phrases will get me farther than an impressive vocabulary that resides solely in my back pocket, so to speak.

This excerpt from Me Talk Pretty One Day basically sums up my current situation.

“On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned "Lie down," "Shut up," and "Who shit on this carpet?" The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. "I want me some lamb chop with handles on 'em.”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day