There are two kinds of travelers: the ones who don’t care and enjoy their trips, and the ones who do care and enjoy their trips more.
If you’re in the “don’t care” bucket, I’m surprised you’re here, but hey, welcome anyway.
For you conscientious ones, not speaking the native language can be a foreboding, intimidating thing — it’s true in Paris, where you hardly have to be fluent in French, but it’s definitely worth your while to try.
And that scares a good few people.
Me? Eh, not so much.
Why?
I’m used to planning out and programming my conversations anyway.
I’m not socially savvy enough to just wing it, goodness no. Even in English and the US and A, I’m thinking ahead, observing patterns, deducing the right kind of transactional cadences to where I’m not going to work myself into an awkward spot.
So whilst in Paris, I found myself surprisingly at ease when needing to get by in French. Thank you, autism, for affording me the circumstance of practice.
For example:
I was waiting in line to buy a shirt. That was intentional — after letting people ahead of me go, I could listen to the conversations ahead of time. The sequence of what the cashier would ask. How the other customers would respond. What words I needed to listen for and how to answer (oui when asked “is that all?” and about “do you need a bag?”)
Just like I do in some unknowns in English, I planned what I needed to say, offered just enough up front to avert questions I wouldn’t understand — only this round, en française.
So yeah, maybe getting in a checkout line and skating through an order without the clerk deducing you were an American is a small thing, but I’m glad I’ve had enough practice being human to be human abroad.
Have you had a similar experience?
The Life Autistic 