Sunday, May 29, 2016

French Reception

Speaking French in Paris: the locals hate your broken French, and go back to English. Speaking French anywhere outside Paris: the locals will love you, and are thrilled you speak French, so they don't have to speak English


10 comments:

  1. As a former Parisian (not working in retail or anything) -- I used to switch to English in the hopes that the tourist asking me a question would too . Not because of any snobbishness but because I could understand their native English much better than their erratically pronounced basic French. No disrespect meant; I was just trying to understand them better.

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    1. You have just pinpointed why I'm afraid to speak French in Paris.

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  2. ... And of course I just couldn't tell them: "Man, your French is unintelligible, I can't understand anything you say. Let's stick to English" ;-D

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  3. (To be fair, my English isn't all that intelligible either; but I couldn't possibly answer a question I didn't understand anyway, so it was still the better option)

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    1. Fair enough! I guess it's up to the foreigner to say, "no, really, let's stick to French, be patient, I'm trying to learn." I have to do that here in Germany all the time.

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  4. Unknown --- that's very interesting, since I don't remember a single occasion after living in France for 2.5 years now that a native French speaker has not understood our "broken" French. But I do remember zillions of occasions when we have not understood them, and that is when they switch to English in frustration.

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    1. Hope you didn't take me wrong. I was referring to tourists who picked up a few sentences from a phrasebook or have vague memories of middle school French, not to people who can actually speak French (as I imagine you did after living in France for over 2 years). Plus, I do have difficulties understanding people with strong accents (which is why I try not to take it personally when people don't understand my English).

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  5. As a French person, I guess it's also related to the fact that in Paris a lot of people can speak English. In the countryside, they can't this much. :)

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    1. Completly untrue, we speak as much english in the country side, we just tend to be more patient in general

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  6. I can make myself understood (though never as well as I'd like). But when I was in Montreal, I became convinced that Canadian French was beyond me.

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