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Damn, Paris has changed a lot. In my days you could talk in basically any language, living or dead, to a Parisian and they would understand every single word. And they’d still only answer in French.
Tbh, I tend to do that sometimes. The number of languages I can somewhat understand outnumbers the number of languages I can attempt to speak.
Especially when it comes to reading: it’s a lot easier to see a bunch of cognates and understand the jist of the sentence than it is to come up with those words and conjugate, order, and pronounce them correctly.
On multiple occasions, I’ve tried to use my limited knowledge to order food or something in another language, only to have the person on the other side look at me confused until I restate myself in English.
I like to think of it like Star Wars where everyone just speaks and responds in their own language.
That’s actually a legit technique to improve your understanding in a language. They speak theirs, you speak yours. It does depend on both people having a good understanding of each other’s languages though.
Yeah but in Paris it was sure done on purpose 😁!
Kind of the opposite for me but ONLY with ordering food in Spanish - I speak awful Spanish, can read it better than speaking or listening, but food - all my life, foods here are labeled in English and Spanish, and often I order so confidently that the person at the counter thinks I only speak Spanish. In absolutely no other situation would anyone mistake me for fluent. It helps that Spanish is so phonetic, and that in the US there are people from so many different places there isn’t one accent.
Pls wash your hands after going to the toilet when you eat in a public place.
Taiwanese born. I have lived in the US for 20+ years. I speak the local Taiwanese Hokka dialect. Married a Taiwanese woman.
I walked into a local breakfast shop and the owner, without looking up, said “What do you want to order”?
How the fuck?!?!
So I moved back to Taiwan after the pandemic and I too can pick them out. It’s honestly the way Americans carry themselves. It’s hard to explain.
French guy here, It’s always the accent. You think you don’t have one, but you do, and when it’s not the accent it’s a confusion about grammar or the gender of a word.
The French was probably too perfect. Shoulda been:
“Je prends uhhhh deeeeux…deux croissants”. 90% of the French people I know can barely get two words out without a “uhh” or “beuh”.
Nobody talks without interferences such as “euh”, “erm”, “like”, etc, because in real life people don’t read lines like actors, they talk as they think. In your example, the person is obviously hesitating about what to order.
For sure, but it’s the rate at which the French use them which always blows me away. And I know I shouldn’t have to say this, and I know it will be ignored anyway, but yes obviously this isn’t every single French person.
I remember a specifically bad example from a person who was, if I remember correctly, introducing their website where they would speak in French and you could listen for practice. Great, sounds good. Except! I couldn’t follow them because they couldn’t pass three words, maximum, without a “uhh”, “beuhh”, or “eeeuhhh”. It was an extreme example, but I think about it all the time.
It all reeks of trying way too hard to hard to convince everyone how laid back they are but they’re some of the most stressed out people I know. I have to wonder if it’s the fact that I live in Montréal so we get a fair number of Parisien.nes here.
Oh, well, parisians are an entirely separate, degenerate species so we’ll at least agree on that.
But yeah, it’s always the accent. I’ll die on that hill. We all have accents and it’s normal.
Saw this very thing in an article today. It was said it was the “American lean”. Apparently we lean on things when chilling and that’s very American.
We’re tired, or invading, sometimes it’s hard to tell.
Not even necessarily on things, just like lean to one side while standing.
The American motherland has a magnetic pull on them, drawing them in.
That’s true. Part of it was taking about how we rarely stand squarely on both feet.
Contrapposto is best pposto
TIL I am American.
I’m sorry for your loss
I’m Indian and I do it. Do the French not?
Whenever I try to speak French, the reply is always the same…
Isn’t that the name of their national lunch?
You’re thinking of Croque Monsieur. Monsieur Clown is the name of a famous cabaret in Paris.
When I was in Italy I felt like lieutenant Aldo Rains. Italy was the only place I actually struggled because English was far less common, and when I was in France for a day I had a near fluent linguist with me. I can speak a little German but never had to.
Did the sweatpants say juicy or juteuse across the butt?
I was just in Bordeaux. Not a single issue with my weak French and I’d almost always get a reply in French. I promise I am nowhere near fluent, maybe A2 level.
But in Paris, nearly every reply was in English and even if I replied back in French I’d get that look “please stop butchering my language” before they’d reply in English. It’s a running joke now, but I really question if it’s just parisons being assholes or maybe they just want to practice.
Ps. Never had this issue with Italian. My accent is almost Roman too and I’m again, not fluent.
Ah you discovered the secret. Even among the French, the Parisians have a certain reputation.
I spent way to many years traveling to France for business and spending several weeks there at a time. I don’t speak French of course as I studied a bit of Spanish. When there as a foreigner you generally get either pleasant and wonderful people or snobbish assholes.
Parisians lean more towards assholes though I met many wonderful people there. It’s more of a disdainful bored attitude without much bite. They know tourism is necessary for their jobs but dealing with tourism is a pain the ass. This interaction pretty much sums it up.
When you are outside of Paris the reactions get more extreme. I got some of the best and worst reactions when I was in smaller cities like Nantes or Lyon.
Yeah we have French tourists in Quebec and the Paris ones are the worst.
I think it helps speaking the language in France, they can to be more nationalistic than Americans.
True, but so do the Bordeaulais
Source: wife is parisien, but her family are al Bordeaulais
Never been to Bordeaux so didn’t know about the reputation. As a foreigner I always had the impression in France that the more you go south the nicer they are (my own lived experience, due to circumstances I live in the Occitanie).
Massive generalisation, but for the Bordeaulais nothing can match Bordeaux.
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I had a good friend from France who informed me that Parisians are just arseholes lmao
As an American I’d just be happy you’re trying. The fact that you try to speak a native language IMO shows respect, even if it isn’t that good. You care enough to try.
I haven’t had issues in Paris, but it might help that I often apologize for my French in advance. I’m Canadian and clearly have learned a different accent, but most people I encountered were quite eager to help me practice.
From my experience in Spain, if you don’t speak Spanish and they don’t speak English they will still try to help you. In the store they may just show you how much you have to pay on the screen. In other places they will quickly open google translate and use that.
In France they just stare at you and make 0 effort to help. Best they can do is just repeat it in French again.
The only French I know is the lyrics to a bunch of songs from Clair Obscure and I guarantee, I am butchering the absolute fuck outta it. Except for “dim dim dam dada dim dim da dada dim da lialom.” I nail that shit. 😤
The music in that game was phenomenal. It gives me chills.
Only reason I really played it all the way through since I wasn’t too keen on the combat, even with the more active parrys and dodges and what not. That and the story, but I kinda hated the ending/explination of what was going on when I finally got there.
I get it. It sort of fell into a trope that I generally dislike in media, but I guess I was hooked on the story because I ate it up.
My only French is from the Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer”
Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?
Not even Joe Cocker with “N’oublier jamais”?
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa
GOD DAMN YOU
The music in that game isn’t French btw
Out of the 120+ pieces of music in the game, only a small handful are not in French. 🤨
Speaking French like a native is so hard. They basically smush every word together into one long sound. I think the French also may not just say “two croissants please, you need to stick a “je prendre” in front or something. I know people who speak fluent French who still can’t speak to the locals in certain places because they can’t understand you unless you get the accent just right.
Yeah, i’d instinctively say “je vais vous prendre” in front of the phrase. We have a lot of weird and technically useless or wrong phrase structures like that in everyday language, so speaking grammatically perfect french is basically sus from the start.
say “je vais vous prendre”
NOOO HAAANK!!! DON’T SAY THAT, HAAAANNNK!!! HAAAAAANNNKKKK
This is my struggle learning Mandarin as well. For individual words or short phrases, my pronunciation is pretty good, but for long sentences, my cadence is shit enough that people have trouble following unless I intentionally speak like an idiot. Like, my immediate Chinese speaking family understands, because they are acquainted with my accent, but random people on the street look at me like I’m an idiot.
It’s the same in any language, the people that were born learning it spoken will always have an instinct that those who didn’t learn until school won’t have. That said, if you live there for a decade you would pick it up to.
I was taught the French language by a person born and raised in France. Every English speaker comments on my impeccable French accent. Every person from the nation looks at me with disgust when I try to reproduce their tongue.
I walked up to a change office to transfer a travelers check to cash.
me: Bonjour!
he stopped me right there
change guy: “I do not speak english”
me: nods, shrugs, hands him the check
change guy: ignores the check, pulls down the lock shutter.
That’s what you get for showing up right as they were closing.
I did ponder that, It was like 1pm on a Saturday, Hours were posted and should have been open, maybe a late lunch or a bathroom break, he could at least have said anything in French, I spoke enough to get by,
I had a couple of interactions like this while in Italy recently. I’d not even opened my mouth and the person responds in English. I specifically selected clothes that don’t have any text on them, but I strongly suspect it’s because I’m white as fuck and look as Midwestern American as one can.
I didn’t have any trouble though, most of the Italians I spoke with seemed happy that I’ve been trying to learn their language and were happy to talk in a mix of Italian and English to meet me where my Italian level was. It was interesting comparing how in the touristy areas of Italy many folks spoke such perfect English they’d lost most accent (or perhaps were themselves transplants) but once I got out of the touristy areas folks were willing to work with my limited Italian
Didn’t order coffee
Should’ve used a quebecois accent
I’ve done it, with a québécois accent, and the fucker still answered me in English. And she was supper polite too. I asked to confirm that I could park my car in the street next to the hotel and she said “I don’t know, I don’t have a car.”
“I don’t know, I don’t have a car.”
This killed me. I can literally see her face.
Salut chum! Tabernak, doix crossaints si vous plait.
That’ll probably get you shot in France
It must be a paris thing, I went to Lyon and obviously hit up a bakery near my friend’s place. I did pointing & grunting and extremely basic french.
I did not enjoy the random fish danish I ended up eating since I fucking hate fish.
Merci beaucoup.
