> as far as I could tell that day, a collective commitment to not speaking English.
Ah... those pesky people speaking their very own language instead of the (ahem...) lingua franca.
Ah... those pesky people speaking their very own language instead of the (ahem...) lingua franca.
But the quantity of smiles goes up 300% when you talk to them in bad French with finger pointing as opposed to fluent English, even in tourist trap areas.
Maybe slightly better service too.
Edit: hey HN, can we have the option to post one anonymous coward comment every couple days from our regular accounts? We're going to run out of throwawayNNNNNN ids sooner or later.
Nowadays young frenchs learn english by overexposition to the language through various medias (school is of no help) and in the past, even if english was taught at school, I think the majority of them didn't learn it properly beyond "my taylor is rich", "The cat is happy" and "I love you".
I didn't "learn" english and it is a mystery why I can express myself and understand others in this language, I guess I have been overexposed to the language when I was young.
That said, I worked in museums at a time in my life and was actually surprised by the huge amount of people travelling in the world with no knowledge of the language of the country they are in, expecting everybody to be able to talk their language like if it was universal, be them italians, frenchs, americans, chinese or whatever.
Another note: I live in Cambodia, where many French people live, and nearly none of them speak the local language, and a very decent amount of them don’t even speak English. Worse yet, the older generation is still hung up in the idea that it’s better for the locals to learn French than English or Chinese.
This is really a very French thing, and you don’t see the same behavior in eg Germany or Italy.
(I’m originally from The Netherlands)
My German is very poor, I used to somewhat understand what was spoken to me (if simple language was used), and to speak is short, basic sentences with shortage of vocabulary. This is just to provide some context - I never actually tried to learn German.
So I was trying to use English as often as possible. A lot of people - and I mean persons like clerks, salespersons, not random passers-by - either straight-up ignored me, or issuing comments like "Du solltest Sprachen lernen".
On the other hand, I never had similar experience when I was speaking broken French in France (or Marocco).
Please note that I don't want to bash Germans or to defend French. But it all depends on who you encounter - but these encounters might on some level shape your opinion on the whole nation no matter of you want it or not
FWIW, I only ever experienced the discussed issue (locals who clearly understand English but refuse to acknowledge me or respond in their language) in France. I really suspect it's specific to french speakers. They uniquely feel that their language was lingua franca and lost the status to English.
I am trying to understand the situation you were in, because I read that a lot and I cannot imagine why such rudeness.
Which... is certainly understandable! I'm sure she sees a lot of tourism and tourists. But for a neurotic person, being singled out as someone holding up the line by someone who is ostensibly there to help things move faster, because I didn't know a language that I expressly said I didn't know and apologized for, was quite jarring. Up until that point, every single person I met with talked to me like I had a second head that they were generally aware of but didn't care about while they tried to be as polite as possible about not bringing it up. It was a kind of clipped politeness that I have been told is just "german". Nobody cares to be friendly, everyone just wants to exchange only the information needed and, while they do so, they would be as happy and pleasant as a person could be. But as soon as the information had been exchanged, they were right back to bewildered disinterest ("why are you still talking to me? we've finished.", while smiling and nodding).
Anyway, whatever it was that she was trying to tell me, the message never got through. When I answered "no" to her question, she just moved me on through. So maybe she was trying to be polite and I showed my ass or something. Or maybe she was just trying to make a joke and then moved past it when there was no way to make me get it. Whatever the case, I left with the distinct feeling that the author described about that French street. "some people here, sometimes, are going to be very uncharitable about your lack of cultural integration. beware of that." Which, on the one hand is pretty obvious; people are just people all over. But on the other hand, it's probably something most cultures would aspire to minimize.
I'm myself native french speaker and do hate the French attitude on language. It's extremely patronizing and do not benefit anyone
Quand je peux aider quelqu'un qui échoue péniblement à trouver des interlocuteurs et qui ne parle pas français, je suis ravi de le faire et je ne m'en sens pas insulté par ailleurs.
Qu'un touriste soit stupide, balourd ou suffisant, sa capacité à parler français ne lui sera d'aucun secours s'il souhaite échapper au jugement que je lui imprime.
Vous savez, j'essaie principalement de comprendre qu'est ce qui peut faire exister le cliché sus-mentionné "les français font exprès de ne pas parler votre langue". Quand je lis "Vous devriez parler français, nous apprécions cela comme une marque de respect" j'ai honte !
Je pense qu'il faut que vous soyez un peu plus explicite sur le fond de votre pensée parce que je trouve au contraire que ça peut être un archaïsme social tout à fait paralysant.
Je trouve que "la déférence" est un mécanisme social dépassé, or cela n'a pas grand rapport avec la notion de respect, si ce n'est que c'est un témoignage forcé et niais de cette dernière. Je trouve l'honnêteté plus respectueuse que sa mise en scène, et je préfèrerai l'absence de déférence car cela signifie que je suis en présence d'un semblable qui m'est égal, qui m'invite à la rencontre plutôt qu'à ce rapport perclus de domination et de soumission.
Vous n'êtes pas transparent, jamais tant que vous n'expliquez pas vos propos plus en détail, c'est tout ce que je pourrais vous dire.
(I realize it was (hopefully) meant in jest-ish, but there are better ways to make the point.)
Honestly, I myself learn one emergency phrase in the native language, "I am sorry, please repeat this as if I have a learning disability". Upon hearing this my vis-a-vis would either actually switch to a slow and dumbed-down register of their native language or realize they won't lose face by speaking bad English to me.
Why are speakers of Japanese, Banty, Hindi and Algonquin vacationing abroad a problem of locals who just want to live their own life?... Most people do learn English for one reason or another, but "entertaining tourists" is not one of them.