Language exchange holidays are wasted on the young. I had a great time with my host – sans youthful embarrassment about my accent – and more adults are doing the same
On the terrace of a brasserie on Rue Cler, a chic Parisian market street, I’m chatting over a tongue-lubricating glass of Sancerre with Sébastien de Lavalette, 33, a French travel company head and my language exchange partner.
Sébastien compliments my French accent, or at least I think he does: “You don’t have that mouth-full-of-bread accent that many British people have”, as I order in my middle-of-the-road restaurant French. Sébastien, who was raised in Paris but whose family hails from Périgord, reminisces about his teenage foreign language exchanges in Spain.
“At 17 I was already 190cm,” he recalls, switching to English. “So I was allocated to a family on the outskirts of Granada as I was considered safe to be on my own. All I did that week was drink sangria, smoke cigarettes in a cantina and learn a bunch of Spanish swear words!”
I’m shadowing Sébastien in his day-to-day life in an attempt to improve my rusty A-level French through forced immersion
I’m staying with Sébastien for a couple of days in his Parisian atelier in the 7th arrondissement, shadowing him in his day-to-day life in an attempt to improve my rusty A-level French through forced immersion. My language skills have waned to transactional brasserie and Métro station French, so this year I decided, having heard about the growing trend for adult language exchanges, that it was time to take the plunge.
This isn’t my first foray as a language exchange student. In 1993, my Birmingham comprehensive matched me for a French exchange with Sylvain, who was male, two years younger than me and a superfan of the 70s British crooner Des O’Connor (which he pronounced “Dess-conner-r-r”). Then came a swap with Aurelie in Lyon, Birmingham’s twin city. Her sister made me transcribe the English lyrics from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack and we ate bright pink crevettes with a strong aioli.
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