All those people online with their anecdotes agreeing with what you wrote, yet my experience has been the complete opposite. I think the problem is Americans being insufferable assholes, and the French not letting that fly as much as other countries.
Depends. They also like to watch you to awkwardly stammer through your hardly recognizable French sentence just to reply in perfect English (or even your mother tongue in border regions).
My favourite is when they ignore you when you speak English (which isn’t even your native language either, just the most likely language to be understood by both parties), then when you speak bad French, they reply on even worse English. Bonus points for those that do it to tourists in France and as tourists in other counties (both have happened to me but ofc I can’t know if the same person would do both).
Im sorry but did you reply to the wrong comment? Or am I missing the connection between the UK warning its citizens of a security risk for travelling to certain countries and some random French individuals having an entitled attitude?
I’m French and foreign languages are one of my hobbies. I’m proficient in English and Spanish. I can at a lower level speak some Russian, German, Czech, and Italian.
Imho the fault lies in our education system which puts a heavy accent on STEM studies and tends to treat anything outside of that as lesser subjects.
Also from anecdotal evidence the younger generations are quite better than the older ones.
While you could say that France is a bit behind the curve in comparison with most other Northern European countries, native English speakers are far worse at learning any other language. I’m not even French, but the circle-jerk English speaking communities have about French people sometimes gets pretty embarrassing.
As someone from the UK, I absolutely do not think that 13% of the population can speak French to an acceptable level. I’d go as far as to say that 13% of the population can barely speak English to an understandable level…
The French do the same with all other languages, so fair game.
All those people online with their anecdotes agreeing with what you wrote, yet my experience has been the complete opposite. I think the problem is Americans being insufferable assholes, and the French not letting that fly as much as other countries.
Yup, much more likely
Depends. They also like to watch you to awkwardly stammer through your hardly recognizable French sentence just to reply in perfect English (or even your mother tongue in border regions).
My favourite is when they ignore you when you speak English (which isn’t even your native language either, just the most likely language to be understood by both parties), then when you speak bad French, they reply on even worse English. Bonus points for those that do it to tourists in France and as tourists in other counties (both have happened to me but ofc I can’t know if the same person would do both).
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Im sorry but did you reply to the wrong comment? Or am I missing the connection between the UK warning its citizens of a security risk for travelling to certain countries and some random French individuals having an entitled attitude?
I’m French and foreign languages are one of my hobbies. I’m proficient in English and Spanish. I can at a lower level speak some Russian, German, Czech, and Italian.
Imho the fault lies in our education system which puts a heavy accent on STEM studies and tends to treat anything outside of that as lesser subjects.
Also from anecdotal evidence the younger generations are quite better than the older ones.
Exactly how heavy is the accent? And are we talking parisian or quebecois?
I stayed at an AirBnb let by a lovely couple a few years back. It’s mostly a meme with just a kernel of anecdotal truth.
Germany’s 2nd most spoken language is English, by 32% of the population.
Germany’s 3rd most spoken language is French, by 9% of the population.
France’s 2nd most spoken language is English, by 24% of the population.
France’s 3rd most spoken language is Spanish, by 9% of the population.
UK’s 2nd most spoken language is French, by 16% of the population.
UK’s 3rd most spoken language is German, by 5% of the population.
Source: https://languageknowledge.eu/
While you could say that France is a bit behind the curve in comparison with most other Northern European countries, native English speakers are far worse at learning any other language. I’m not even French, but the circle-jerk English speaking communities have about French people sometimes gets pretty embarrassing.
As someone from the UK, I absolutely do not think that 13% of the population can speak French to an acceptable level. I’d go as far as to say that 13% of the population can barely speak English to an understandable level…
The point is precisely that they are very capable and do speak the language, but they sometimes refuse to.
And yes, it’s also a meme.
A racist one, if it isn’t based on data as seen above.
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The simplest fact is, it’s xenophobia, not racism
Edit - I don’t mean the comment is xenophobic, I mean it’s not racism if it’s about nationality