My experience has been that, if you learn even just 'travel-French', but practice enough to actually pronounce that little bit.. pretty well: the vaunted intolerance of furriners (?) vanishes, It seems to be as simple as: if 'they' see any sign that you actually cared enough to seriously Try - they Will Love you. Many Muricans do not bother even a tiny-'try'; naturally these are Despised.

It is of course, a most mellifluous language; I feel that the sound of good French is (how to say) calming... generally speaking. (Never learned to SHOUT! in it tho ;-)

FWIW - c'est formid\ufffdble (the \ufffds, \ufffds will confuse!) to imagine grokking the nuances and especially the er throat mechanics.. very quickly. But (I found, anyway) - it is almost-fun and certainly is satisfying .. to get down well, some of the most-needed words. Need to know a few conjugations of 'etre' pretty damn well.. natch :-\ufffd


HTH


Ashton

PS - try Not to confuse Fran\ufffdois with.. Fran\ufffdoise.. = :(