Being a French speaker in Ireland

Fussy Eater

In respect of employment opportunities I was wondering how useful people found having French in Ireland was? I lived in a Francophone environment for several years and although I picked the language up to some degree I'm certainly not fluent. Given the difficulties of the Irish economy at the moment I've been mulling over whether or not to really push my French as I suspect it could be an extremely useful asset. Your thoughts are very welcome.

franc 91

There is the French Forum and an association for French people living in Ireland as well as le Petit Journal, but obviously these are there primarily for French nationals who also happen to be native speakers. You could try and contact them anyway to see if they might have any suggestions or ideas for you. There's also a Meet-up club for French speakers in Dublin, I've given details of this elsewhere on this forum.

Fussy Eater

Cheers, franc. I just thought there might be some (French or otherwise) who look at this forum that use the language in a professional capacity and wondered how useful/advantageous it was.

shrapnel222

there are huge amounts of jobs for french or any other language speakers in Dublin as there are loads of customer services-inside sales-etc...The only thing is you would have to be fluent as you will be dealing with purely French clients/customers

Fussy Eater

Granted you'd have to be fluent but having worked with many French speakers and known English speakers that have worked in a French environment I know you can get away with being 'good' rather than 'great'. Business language should be simple, clear and concise and without the use of colloquialisms.

peckerhead

Eh, that's fine, as long as all your clients (or potential clients) agree to abide by those rules...

I don't know what area you're in, but my wife has been keeping an eye out lately (she has a degree in French) and there seem to be several openings in the area of after sales/customer support, as shrapnel222 says. But talking French to some guy at the end of a phone is a lot more difficult than face to face contact; you would need a near-fluent command of the language IMHO.

franc 91

Yes I know of at least one Irishman who came over here to do a post-doctorate in a lab in Orsay (Université Paris-Sud) and who ended up by going off to, I think it was Edinburgh and got a job in a specialised call-centre. His accent wasn't 100% but he knew all the scientific language that he needed to be able to do it.

Fussy Eater

Yes, I'm in finance so a 'business language' is very much applicable.

Once again, I agree you need a very good grasp of the language. I'm not thinking of learning the language from scratch on a whim. I already have a grasp and read French internet sites regularly. It's just for deciding if it's worth investing the necessary time (and money) to take that next step and become fluent. And although fluency isn't easy it certainly isn't impossible!

shrapnel222

Fussy Eater wrote: »

Yes, I'm in finance so a 'business language' is very much applicable.

Once again, I agree you need a very good grasp of the language. I'm not thinking of learning the language from scratch on a whim. I already have a grasp and read French internet sites regularly. It's just for deciding if it's worth investing the necessary time (and money) to take that next step and become fluent. And although fluency isn't easy it certainly isn't impossible!

put yourself to the test and apply for one of these jobs. you will definitely get an interview, and they will really test your French. They will have a good understanding of how much or little work you need before you have the required standard. Basically for these jobs you would be immersed in French all day so your level, if it's good enough to start with, would improve almost as fast as if you were living in France. You lose nothing by trying as they say.

franc 91

On France Inter and France Info , especially in the morning there are specialists who come on and talk about this kind of thing. You can listen to Patrick Lelong (Question d'Argent) if you go to the website of France-Info.

Fussy Eater

shrapnel222 wrote: »

Basically for these jobs you would be immersed in French all day so your level, if it's good enough to start with, would improve almost as fast as if you were living in France. You lose nothing by trying as they say.

This is a good point. When living on the continent I once had a young housemate who was doing a linguistics degree in the UK and was spending the year abroad as a stagiaire. I know she found it really difficult initially and struggled to understand French but thanks to her job (which certainly would have had a lot of telephone work touching on the point above) her language skills came on in leaps and bounds. Still, at the same time she wouldn't have been brilliant at it and would shy away from speaking French if she could and had to concentrate very hard to understand it!

franc 91

As suggested above I always recommend that my students (the adults, that is) listen to the radio, and now quite often you can go to the relevant website and get more textual information about what is being said and sometimes even the transcription. The language spoken here hasn't been shaped or simplified for someone learning the language in question.

Fussy Eater

Thanks all to the replies above. I'm inclined to push myself and learn French seriously because things are so bleak currently in Ireland that you really need special skills and experience to stand out from the crowd for prospective employers. I do think it's pretty ironic that I live in French speaking countries for years and only learn enough to get by and then move to Ireland and attempt fluency but there you go!