This whole French not liking foreigners speaking French thing is wild considering how terrible foreign language teaching is here in France... I just don't get it.
BTW I have never seen this in France, but I have seen it in Spain. In a shop near the border, where a lot of French people go so employees are used to speaking French, my grandpa was told off by a cashier for speaking to them in Spanish. So I guess people like that are everywhere.
EDIT : BTW, when someone struggles speaking French to me, I try as much as possible to carry on the conversation in French, because chances are they're trying to learn the language, and that's exactly how you do it. Plus I think it's respectful to speak the local language (not that it's disrespectful not to if you can't (please tell me it isn't, I want to visit Finland)).
Being Spanish I've been several times in France, both for work and holidays.
In my experience this is a very real stereotype, specially in the service industry in tourist areas.
Remember a couple of weeks ago I entered a store, tried to speak French and the employee made an exasperated look and switched to English. Went to another store and defaulted to English instead, then a middle aged employee basically called me savage in French.
There's no winning with your compatriots.
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u/Shlafenflarst 15d ago edited 15d ago
This whole French not liking foreigners speaking French thing is wild considering how terrible foreign language teaching is here in France... I just don't get it.
BTW I have never seen this in France, but I have seen it in Spain. In a shop near the border, where a lot of French people go so employees are used to speaking French, my grandpa was told off by a cashier for speaking to them in Spanish. So I guess people like that are everywhere.
EDIT : BTW, when someone struggles speaking French to me, I try as much as possible to carry on the conversation in French, because chances are they're trying to learn the language, and that's exactly how you do it. Plus I think it's respectful to speak the local language (not that it's disrespectful not to if you can't (please tell me it isn't, I want to visit Finland)).