It's hardly a secret that Gui and I speak English at home. We met and began dating in Texas for nearly half a year, and we lived in California for more than half a year, too. Besides the fact that I didn't know a lick of French when we met (well, that community college class that I got a D in and that provoked me to switch to the much lovelier Italian language doesn't count, does it?), we were both living and working in an English-speaking country. During the time when we were in a long-distance relationship, we communicated by phone, IM and email exclusively in English. It was just never even a question that we'd speak English. I don't imagine that our relationship would have been able to progress as it did if Gui didn't speak English so well when we first met.

When I came to France nearly a year ago, I began down the long and turbulent road to learning French - a road that I still currently see no end to. Although my initial efforts were admittedly half-hearted, some progress has nonetheless been made. We've taken the advice of others to each speak in our mother tongues, to each speak the other's language, to pick a day or two when all we speak is French, but nothing's quite caught on. On random occasions, Gui will bust out with speaking French out of seemingly no where and I'll of course respond in English, but it never lasts very long.

There are times when I feel guilty for making him speak a language that he can't fully express himself in, but when I ask him how he feels about it, he makes the point that, in fact, he can't express himself correctly to me when we speak French. How is that possible? I think it has a lot to do with how closely he followed American pop culture when he was growing up. I'm often shocked to find that he knows more words to English songs, more American colloquial sayings and more American movie quotes than I do.

Now, though, I wonder if using the excuse that it's awkward to speak in French to each other has just become, well, an excuse. Just last night someone asked us why we don't speak French at home - a question that I get asked nearly everytime we're out with people. And, after responding with the habitual, "well, it's just kind of weird for us since, you know, we always spoke English to begin with," I started wondering if I still believed what I was saying. And, frankly, it's not much of a good excuse now that my French is improving and it's obvious I need to practice it. People are usually nice and respond with, "yeah I guess it would be quite difficult to change the language in which you speak with your husband after a few years." But, not really. We live in France, and lord knows if we were living in Texas, there's no way Gui would be able to get away with speaking only French. Stepping out of my comfort zone is really what I need to make myself do. I know I often whine and cry about how much I hate the French language, but I really am eager to learn it. I wish so dearly that I could express myself to Gui's friends and family as precisely as I can in English - that I can have full-on conversations with Gui in his native tongue. I'm hoping that someday we'll be able to switch our common language to French, like so many other Franglo couples do. For now, I'll continue down this bumpy road and see where it takes us.

Check out the originating post for this group blog.