re-learn french

But hey, it works enough to communicate on most levels.
I would love to gain some arguing fluency, but come to think about it, cursing at rude people in Italian has its advantages :)

... given that many people here would cut their leg rather than go a little out of their way to help you when you’re struggling with the language. I hate stereotypes, but I hate even more when people conform to them.

(that sums up pretty well my recent performances with French)
OK, I need help from people who speak three or more languages: how do you manage to keep them “separated”?
I mean: during an average conversation I can start pretty easily with French, but at one point my mind starts picking only English words. It’s like they’re in a drawer labeled “Foreign words: open here”, and at that point I switch to English for good.
I know: practice, practice. But are there any mnemonic tricks that worked for you?

(gees, it feels as rusty as a bike left out all winter)

Anyway, C. has moved. I will be there in a couple of weeks (well, only visiting). Seemingly he will be there for a year, so there will be at least some weekends of intensive classes.

Time to engage perfect (French) strangers in conversation in order to brush up on the rat bastard. No local will be spared.

I didn’t speak French at all until I was 25. I applied for a European university exchange program, and I moved to Limoges, barely knowing how to spell my name, and literally thrown in the middle of the semester. The same classes normal indigenous French people took! And then, almost magically, in one month I could understand pretty well my Latin and French Literature classes. In two months I was able to have decently meaningful conversations with my dorm fellows. At the end of the sixth month I was asked a couple of times if I was from Marseille (it took 48 hours for my friends to deflate my hyper-expanding ego).

Then I moved back to Italy, some (erm) years passed, and I relied on my surprisingly easy gain more than I should: infact now, while the comprehension is still good, if I have to speak/write, my vocabulary and my general grasp of the structure have horribly weakened. I can have a very basic conversation, often babbling because that frigging word firmly stays on the tip of my tongue…

Anyway, I will start relearning it someday, but in the meanwhile I found the most useful website ever, for those like me who aren’t so keen with French accents.

Réacc