Me studying French so ~~that I can refuse to speak it~~ I immediately get a response in English whenever I attempt to speak it
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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I was stationed in Germany with the US military once, just 30 minutes from the French border. My American coworkers visited Paris and complained that everyone there were snobbish assholes. Every time they tried to ask someone for directions, they got ignored at best and insulted at worst.
My wife and I went to Paris a few times and we had the complete opposite experience. We both took several years of French in high school, so we had an extremely basic knowledge of the French language (thanks, American public schools! 🙄) and we tried to speak to people in French.
Every time we spoke up, they would notice us struggling and immediately switch to English for us. And then they were very helpful. Turns out, my coworkers were just speaking English to French people and expecting a response in English. Which insulted a lot of French people, so they ignored them.
TL;DR: Speak the local language as best you can and French people can be very nice and helpful. Just assume they'll speak English and you'll get some rude responses in kind.
French is my first language, Parisians were still assholes who switched to English because they didn't like the way I spoke French.
Everyone outside Paris was cool, but I totally get the stereotypes about Parisians. I don't entirely blame them, living in a city that gets that much tourism must suck, but I am still salty at the guy working in a pizza place who served our party entirely in broken English despite us only speaking French to him.
thanks, American public schools! 🙄
😐
Hmmm
I've had an experience where I simply asked a french cashier if they spoke english and she threw a fit. Spoke to me in French and mixed my items with the next customer's.
I had shitty American school French when I went to Paris and I did my best, and nearly everyone said they didn't speak any English which I knew was a fucking lie. I have since decided not to speak French. I've still got Dutch, German, Korean and a little bit of Norwegian on top of English. France is the only country in Europe I don't want to visit again. Rural France was better but I still don't plan to go back.
I am fully bilingual eng/fr, went to school in french, but have a particular regional Canadian accent. Whenever in France, everyone responds in English anyways. They don't like the accent at all. On my first trip to Paris, after ordering a beer at a bar in the latin quarter after checking into my hotel, an older woman sitting at the bar as a customer turned to me and said "Vous parlez mal". i.e. You speak badly. I'll never forget the horror in her eyes as I spoke.
In my year learning French at school, I befriended someone in toulouse and we'd have quick occasional video chats. The face she made while i was talking made it seem like i was doing nails on chalkboard. She visibly squirmed a bit.
My teacher on the other hand noticed I pronounced certain words in a toulousian accent and was pleased. Apparently it's a nice accent. It's too bad i didn't keep going. Could have visited France and terrorized the locals by forcing them to listen to me speak.
It takes me about 15min before being able to understand the canadian accent and stop trying to recognize every words. That requires a lot of concentration to decipher each words. During my first meeting with Canadians, we had to switch back to English has it was easier to understand.
It's like when you talk to an old farmer lost in the middle of nowhere and you need subtitles to understand the words. That requires practice!
Vous parlez mal". i.e. You speak badly. I'll never forget the horror in her eye
It’s funny that she would think that our french is worse than theirs, when canadian french is closer to actual french than parisian french.
Is it closer?
What is “actual French”?
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_French has lots of info on this but almost all of it is “citation needed”. It sounds like it depends on who you ask though leans towards Metropolitan (Paris) being the standard because of the language origins and it being easier to learn.
Well if you go back 500 years, every little corner of france has their own version of french, with Paris speaking roughly what they speak today. Canadians descend from other regions, mostly the north and west and inherited their way of speaking. So I call it “actual french” but really I just mean the french that was most common at the time, since this was the most populated region of france with a lot less people living in Paris.
This can be traced to a variety of sounds that we have in canadian french that are present throughout France as accents but not in the modern “standard french”. Such as the “eu” in “beurre”.
I don’t really have a source for this, this is what they teach us in school.
I’m not sure, it sounds like Paris was pretty happening in the 1500s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Paris
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I was told my pronunciation was fine but what gave me away as an American was how long I took to say bonjour.
Now i wonder how long you take to say bonjour
I'm hoping they draw it for about 5 seconds like I do.
Normally, at about 10 feet away I try to make eye contact and smile/nod during approach, then I'll verbally greet at about 5 feet away.
This was something I learned while working at a resort and it stuck with me. By American standards, this is considered fast and early.
you're telling me the opening sequence of Beauty and the Beast is culturally accurate!?
If they've made eye contact, yes.
Yup, can confirm. Also, if it's past 6 pm, make sure to switch to 'bonsoir'.
If it's someone I know, I just say 'salut'. It's way more casual, and can also be used as goodbye to boot.
Bong-sewer!
That's pretty much why I am studying it.
Me, understanding that my superpower is that I feed on sarcasm and eye rolls.
I once said "bonjour" to a friend of mine, and a nearby French woman gave me a thumbs-up, and that has sustained my pride in the years since.
Congrats, you are now Flemish!
To give some context: in Belgium there is two main regions, Flanders and Wallonia. Flemish people speaks Flemish Dutch and Walloons speak French.
Since Flemish Dutch and French are the two official language of Belgium a lot of Fleming are learning French as a secondary language to be able to communicate with Walloons. Walloons on the other hand don't care to learn Flemish Dutch at all.
So as consequence a lot of Flemish do know French but refuse to speak French with Walloons.
So as a French person I ended several time in a situation where I'm trying to communicate in English with a Fleming who refuse to use French with me, until he realize by my accent that I'm not Walloons, then he would start speaking to me in French.
That's fantastic, thank you!
I know a Wallonian that does the opposite: she lives in the Netherlands, reads, understands, and is able to speak Dutch, but she still will only speak English (or French)
This was my grandma. She married a Quebecois man who was ESL and raised his french kids from a previous marriage all while refusing to ever utter a single syllable in their language. You could ask her anything in french and she would clearly understand and respond in english. She spent sixty years living with and loving french speakers but she never slipped, not even a bonjour. She also refused to ever say why. We waited until my grandfather passed to bury her ashes because we were certain if we left her alone at the family plot in rural Quebec she would find a way to make us regret it.
That's really neat, your grandma sounds lovely!
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Ah I was going to post this. Bless him ❤️
That last sentence. Perfection.
Shit you're going to have me learning French now
Fuck the French
They're great lovers so why not?
That’s such a French attitude. Gotta love it
He's getting the french culture alright
Insert Sartre ~~joke~~ serious philosophical statement here
“I’m sorry, we’re out of cream. Would you like your coffee with no milk, instead?”
Now, provide an example that you cannot, is impossible, to translate into French.
And I'll accept your claim of unknowing is better than knowing.
"Wow, I really think the English have the best cuisine in the world"
Literally me
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