French language rant

I consider myself to be fairly knowledgable in French and speak it fairly well; considering that I have a a Bachelor's and a Masters degree in which all my classes were in French and I speak it more than I do English.

Recently I had to explain to the insurance guy that we had a "flood" or rather a water problem behind the tiles in our bathroom.  The word tile in French is carrelage. So I kept telling him carrelages (my pronunciation car lage) carrelage and he was like grillage (like a barbecue). Later did I find out that carrelage is pronunced  care lage. but really does  that change anything if I said carlage instead of carelage ?

And this got me thinking...

that the French need to take a French for foreginers 101 class in order to learn how foreigners hear certain words.  I mean I am used to the French's bad pronuciation of english words and I still understand what they are talking about.

vhere are you going, vhat are you doing ? you know where the w's sound like v's. or they forget to add the s at when things are plural (I want one of those thing.) or the th sound. the = zuh (sounds like duh but with a z).

So why do I get such a hard time for my pronunciation ?
One time someone told me the reason is, that I don't articulate and speak loud and his reason behind that was that I was afraid I was going to make a mistake when speaking. When really and truly I am just a soft-spoken and shy person, and he didn't believe that this was true.

But then again, people have said that they enjoy my cute English accent, somehow they always assume though that I am English instead of American and that gets set straight rather quickly. 

or maybe I just need to invest in a French pronunication class ?!? or the French need to invest in some English pronunication classes ?

What do you think ?
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