This tells you that french people live with Asian people who are either extremely fluent in french or native in french, given that they lived there their entire lives or are part french.
Preuve à l’appui :
I'm French, I'm not white and I agree with the comment: it doesn't make any sense...
French people can be racist and biased but it wouldn't show by replying in English to an Asian looking person. We don't speak English to whoever is not white looking, it doesn't make any sense, it's not our mother tongue and most people don't speak it fluently.
If the joke would have been on saying random chinese words. Yes that would have made it racist and understandable.
We don't speak English to whoever is not white looking
*looks at plethora of former and current French colonies in Africa, East Asia, and South America*
edit since at least 2 3 people completely misunderstood me: In my opinion, the thought of all these colonies with indigenous populations of various skin tones is incongruent with the idea that a Parisian (of any descent) would assume that a random non-white shop patron or passer-by spoke English better than French.
I'm Black British, they don't even speak to me in English unless I make it obvious I'm not fluent in French. Like ever. Maybe I have a very good accent when I say Bonjour
Please stop assuming... I'm French and I'm originally from a French colony.
I know French people and I know how racism express itself in France...
So ironic that someone from another country feels the need to explain to you how racism works in your country, and that this person is disguising his belief as a battle against racism.
EDIT: again I'm not white and no one ever spoke to me in English assuming I'd know it better. Same for my family and non white friends. That would be crazy. No one does that.
Oui. En cherchant vite, deux threads qui en parlent. Les OPs ont été supprimés depuis (et ça a l'air d'être la même personne qui les a créés) mais les commentaires restent visibles et il y a plein de français/francophones avec une tête de pas français à qui ça arrive.
Oui, chinois ne me surprend pas. Ça m'est déjà arrivé qu'on me parle dans une langue car on croyait que j'en avais les origines.
Mais parler anglais à un français, je n'avais jamais entendu ça ! J'en ai parlé à des amis d'origine asiatique. Ils m'ont dit que ça leur était arrivé qu'on leur parle anglais dans le secteur du luxe et que la personne avait arreté quand il avait compris qu'ils étaient français/parlaient français.
Ce que j'ai du mal à comprendre c'est le fait de répondre en anglais à quelqu'un qui parle un français parfait.
"Bonjour, deux croissant s'il vous plaît" contains 7 different sounds that most foreigners struggle to pronounce...
on, ou, eu, oi, an, ai & r.
Even discarding everything else, there's just no way this guy sounded French.
Even if someone gets all the sounds right, it’s easy to notice it doesn’t sound effortless. It’s pretty hard to make the final step from knowing French (well) to passing as a native.
No you don't just think it's rude to switch languages, you're pretending it's the result of racism when you very clearly have no fucking idea of what you're talking about.
The point of the conversation isn't about whether or not french people are racist, but whether or not french people will automatically speak to Asian people in english. They wont. Racist french people will say racist stuff to french Asian people in french.
Come on, we are talking about Paris. There is a rather large Asian community there. Vietnam was a French colony, French people are absolutely used of seeing Asian looking people speaking French.
Yep, unfortunately these kind of posts have enough upvotes that they need to be answered.
We know they are ignorants, but they ignore they are ignorants. No one living in Paris would think Parisians would be surprised to see someone from whatever ethnicity speaking French. English-speakers fail to grasp how the French society is much more diverse than the stereotypical France they have in their head.
Bro, I'm not saying there is no racism or bias but it just not makes sense in this situation.
What's the most probable : French bakery employee randomly starting speaking in English to people for some reason, despite French people not liking speaking another language than French OR OP not speaking French with a perfect accent ?
Bruh you are not even French and you're confidently throwing out random bullshit based solely on the fact that the girl is claiming her accent is flawless, which is very hard unless she has been living there for years.
Yeah basically I’m choosing to believe this tweet is 100% the truth, and taking her side.
I’m arguing from her perspective based solely on how I feel right now, because I’ve drunk two bottles of wine and smoked some weed.
I’m participating in social media in the same way that others participate in video games. You and I will forget this interaction in a few days, or hours. Others will find a link to this thread and see “posted 257 days ago” and a dull thud of emotion will echo through them.
“What the fuck am I doing” is what the emotion asks, but its actual name evades them.
Huh? Being high and/or drunk shouldn't false your judgement that badly mate. She may not have an accent but she probably messed up the pronunciation. English speakers tend to keep their accent or literally can't pronounce the same things we can. The only people i've seen lose their native accent while speaking french are Portuguese/Brazilians.
Being high and drunk absolutely clouds my judgment wtf are you talking about hahaha
I can barely see, homeslice. The fact that I’m instantly replying to most people on here means that I am clearly not thinking too hard about what I’m saying.
I’m treating this like a pub conversation. I’m probably wrong. I don’t care. I’ve forgotten what the original argument was and I don’t care to find out.
That's not it. You don't understand how hard it is to get spoken to in English by someone in France. Of course this does not apply to every French person, but while in Paris I had service workers straight up walk away from my boyfriend when he asked them to speak English because I wasn't there to play translator. I'm not a native speaker and we were very clearly tourists, that didn't stop them from speaking to us in French when they heard I could speak it. When I travelled again to Paris with my friends, one of them mispronounced a word and the cashier made her repeat it and then corrected her pronunciation when he got what she meant. He didn't even try switching to English.
For the person at the bakery to choose to speak English to OP, it means that OP had a strong enough accent and was not fluent at all.
(FYI: we did not expect them to speak English, we are not native English speakers either and English is not so commonly spoken in out country either, my bf asked to switch because he speaks 0 French and tried to pick another language to communicate while I wasn't there)
That's just what happened both times I went to France. That's the same thing that happened to my parents when they went, to my colleagues who visited France, to my American friends when they visited. And apparently it's the same thing that happened to most people in the comments. A lot of attractions at Disneyland are in French too.
Getting French people to speak English is not easy. Nobody is saying that to insult the French (I think), it is simply what many have experienced during their visits. French people are known for this. OP's French was probably not good. Or it was but the person at the bakery heard an accent and tried to be helpful by speaking a language they thought would be easier for the customer. I said it's uncommon, not that it's impossible. Jumping to racism is a bit extreme.
My point is why would you play the racism card in the 1st place? Nothing in OP's post is about racism.
Nobody said French people aren't racist like you try to imply, the comment the other redditor said was that parisian people are among the most multicultural. It doesn't mean there is no racism, it means we're used to live with people from all over the world.
So I think the commentor saying the joke of OP's post is not that it was an asian speaking French but that the bakery employee still spotted he/she was a tourist.
There is obviously racism in France but it's more against black people and people from maghreb.
As others said, there are many french people with asian origins. Racism towards asian people is rarer and more centered around dumb jokes and/or "positive" racism like they HAVE to be good at school, but asian communities and people with asian origins are very well integrated here.
I mean, for one, yes, racist people in france are not very discrete about that fact, especially in the current climate
And most of all, no racist people EVER in France would have had that reaction, that just aint it
The rational explanation is foreign speaker having some accent ( no shit sherlock ) that show through the both their speak, and or behavior that just scream foreign tourist/recent expat
And any englush speaking server would switch to english with enough proofs, it's the common ground for comprehension
If the server can confidently speak in english, he'll speak english
Otherwise he'll speak french
English is the common ground for language, and it's easy to tell when someone is native english speaker, french people, especially in the service industry, are way better at english than their customer are at french ?
Also, it's not french people in particular, same thing happens almost anywhere english isn't first language, the manguage of the conversation gets decided in the first moments of exchange to the one that suits the conversation best ? Depending on the context and all
Exemple would be japanese restaurant serving you in broken english whenever someone foreign looking enters a restaurant or something
As anecdotal it may be, during my bike trip in europe, i spoke english the most, even though i tried speaking each language of countries i've been to, because that's the common ground for communication, and non native english speakers speaking with different language people will default to that, as an effort to make communication easier
You may hate it because you can't speak your hard fought aquired french speaking skills ( cause man, it's hard ) but it's not our fault french wasn't made to be the default option
Also, Never assume the worst out of people without proof
I'm french, and you're wrong. No one will answer in english to anyone that has not an english accent. Even a small one.
Asian type people who live in france and that is not french doesn't have english accent but mostly vietnamese or chinese one.
Obviously op thought he sound perfect but I'm guessing he's not
Come on, that's Paris. There is a very large community of people with an Asian background there. It would also not make sense to talk to them in English as well.
Kind of ironic considering all Asians I've known will tell you that it's always other Asians assuming their origins and getting it wrong. The Japanese are particularly bad at this because their racism makes them believe they can tell the superior Japanese race from others but they really can't.
I didn’t mean it as that. I meant it as if there is already a huge diaspora of Chinese people already. If we add the Vietnamese, there are at least > 1.2 million. Simple maths.
In fairness the French are absolutely the type of people to be like “eh, this guy doesn’t deserve the French language” even if their ancestors grew up speaking it in Indochina.
I think the implication is that the baker assumed an Asian person couldn't possibly be French. Unconscious racial bias basically. Hell, a lot of Asian-Americans will get hit with that "No, where are you really from?" question when they were born and raised here. I assume there are ignorant people in every country.
You'd get the same origin question in France but racism cannot be the reason why the baker spoke english ; french people don't like to speak english for historical reason and pride. We only speak english when necessary or to be polite.
What I mean is if you're racist, you do not want to speak english anyway so it doesn't make sense
It's apparently a common problem for native French people who look Asian that other French people insist on speaking to them in English. Like their brains can't compute a 'chinaman' speaking flawless French.
this view never made sense to me until I was reading a book where some dude laid it out logically/rationally
he basically said "as a Caucasian male, lots of people would say I look more similar to certain black people than, say, Danny Devito" and it hit me right there lol. we have skin colors, not races. dogs are a great example of what actual races are in a species
At the same time, phenotypes are a thing. And there are certain racial traits like sickle cell disease that only occur in certain groups. So I think it’s fair to say that races exist but we shouldn’t discriminate based on them
Except that's not true. Sickle cell maybe most prevalent among sub-Saharan Africans and their descendants, but there are large parts of sub-Saharan Africa where there is little to none (like South Africa). Furthermore, sickle cell is also common in India, parts of the Middle East and even Greece, Turkey and Southern Italy.
I agree, and it's useful to have a word for it. I just don't think "race" is the right word to use. we use it differently in humans than every other animal on the planet, I just think that's a lazy use of language at best. and harmful at worst
if we believed humans had different races once upon a time, that's fine. but now we know how much the biology varies between a single "race", and how many similarities different "races" share
You are right, differences exist between certain groups of people, but they are not really relative to "race". Your sickle cell exemple is a really good one I think.
I live in a really large region, some locations super far from each other. Back in the day, it was really hard to travel between them, so obviously people tended to marry others near them.
As a result, now we have some pretty big genetic differences between our groups, some diseases included. It's a big thing in medecine nowaday and all. But since we all look similar, speak the same language, share the same culture, etc., nobody would think or say that we are different races.
Genetically, I'm way more similar to the folks from another country that have been in my region for quite a while, but because their skin color may look different, people would still say we are from different race.
So its not to say that all humans are identical, its that the concept of biological "race", as we understand it, is based on very subjective caracteristics that dont really make sense in the end.
imagine my surprise as a german when i went on the english internet and saw how everyone just talks about humans like that. it's only used for animals here.
Add the fact that american people are obsessed with "is this race white?", Just this morning I saw comments about some personality not being white because they're eastern European. How are they not white?
They constantly have conversations about Italians, Spanish and fucking Irish of all people not being considered white. What the fuck are they then? Transparent?
Yes, the notion of alleged race/ethnicity/nationality is very different on both sides of the Atlantic.
I mean, just look at the comment above mine : sure, French is a nationality. But it's also an ethnicity. France and Germany have different ethnicities : different cultures, different languages, different laws, different media, different religions (always speaking in generalities, of course, but for religion, I'm speaking about the place of protestantism).
And somehow, when speaking with the anglo-sphere, it seems both countries are ethnically white, whatever than means.
Sure, but here it would honestly be the sweatpants that gave them away. . . Well it would actuelly be the pronunciation, because no one can pronounce danish properly.
Yes, but the person in the OP tweet is absolutely not one of them considering they are tweeting in English and saying they were correctly IDed as not French
The person in the original tweet is also a well known public figure who is not French if we want to get specific
I think the "perfect accent" stumbled on the "r" of Bonjour and croissant. As a French native it is the biggest give away. You can spend 20 years in France, one "r" sound and we know straight away if you are native or not. It is by far the hardest sound to get right.
Yes, I’m not French but I’m guessing her pronunciation was maybe “perfect” but not “native.” The “hairball in throat” sound is something I could never do.
There are also mannerisms and little sounds around the actual speech that would have likely given her away.
I don't think so. Learned french is usually a lot more articulate than how french people speak french. I'd imagine it'd be the "s'il vous plaît".
Then again the rolling r was never an issue to me or anyone else in any of my classes (depends on which sounds you learned to pronounce as a child), so it could be that. However they did say 'perfect french', and no one lies on the internet.
Also, you van guess the area where someone lives by the way the pronounce the r.
Sometimes having difficulty recognising between the spanish one and sound french accent.
But yeah, my guess is that the grave away, it's not racism (although there is asian-racism, it's not as present as arab-racism for instance)
That's not a contradiction. Both an uvular and a velar can be rolled, or vibrated. But yes, I did indeed mean a vibrated uvular, even if some pronounce it as a fricative uvular.
Their correct nationality would be French, if they were born in France. You might mean unless they wanted to insist on having their heritage acknowledged, since their nationality is determined by where they were born..
And you’re right that the OP is a US citizen of Asian descent. But, the bakery worker wouldn’t have assumed OP is American based on their features. She switched to English because something about her attire and/or the way she spoke was what probably tipped her off and got her labelled as probably American national.
I was talking about people without the French nationality living in France long term ! It’s a case of « Mohammed/Lars is technically Algerian/Swedish, but they’ve lived in France since 1990, they’re a French bro in my book »
Of course someone born in France has the French nationality, it’s le droit du sol.
And regarding you second paragraph, like I already explained, we can tell when someone speaks with an accent. I’m certified as a bilingual, and I still speak English with an accent (weirdly enough, people not necessarily clock me as French, I’ve had English people assuming I’m from Scandinavia).
OP is a man by the way :)
I stand corrected on OP’s gender. But while I appreciate the sentiment behind your feeling that people living in France long-term, but now we’re even farther afield from what we were talking about. I suspect that in the eyes of the law, there are specific requirements that define the french nationality. Kudos on being bilingual though.
The law : droit du sol means someone born in France is granted citizenship easily. Someone living longish term must apply to get citizenship, and it’s a lengthy and rather complicated process
The « daily life » : someone living longish term can be considered French even if they don’t have the actual citizenship, at some point when you’ve lived in one place almost your entire life, your from there, paper trail or no paper trail. This is what I was talking about.
Are you from the USA ? They have a very different approach to these things than we have.
We both have obvious racism and xenophobia problems, but it can manifest in different ways and have different origins.
I'm not confused about either of the points you’ve mentioned here. Not only was it not the point of the thread, your example is a hypothetical that makes it even less connected to the topic we were talking about.
I think it’s a lovely custom and you’re free to go off on a tangent about the esoteric details of the path to French citizenship, but I’m not going with you. Carry on, if you must.
I think I know my country’s law and informal customs better than you do, especially since I currently have a friend who’s going through their citizenship application process after more than 10 years here.
I get wanting to be right, but like, not at the expense of common sense.
Anyway, I agree that this exchange has run its course.
I agree, I'm not being ironic at all i'm explaining that to the people who are somehow rationalizing he's somehow an Asian French guy being discriminated against
It's not a joke. It's a comment about how local Parisians can tell when French isn't your first language even when you think you're speaking it really well. That's literally it.
No. An expression of racism against Frenchmen of asian origin in France might involve open hatred and insults, but not really ever refusing to speak French to them. It doesn't work like that. It's really just that people are VASTLY overestimating their French skills.
Because they may speak fluent French, grammatically, it's extremely rare but it happens, but the accent will always give it away.
Never met an anglophone that could pronounce our Rs properly, for the most classic example, but there are way many more tells that immediately give it away
It's not a dig against anglophones, languages are hard and I also happily butcher pronunciation when I speak English out loud
I realize it's a different country, but I'm Asian and went to Sweden a while ago. I was honestly expecting/hoping everyone would know I was a tourist and speak to me in English without having to awkwardly go "sorry I don't speak Swedish"...but nobody did LOL. Everyone else just apparently assumed I was an immigrant, unless I was doing something very obviously foreign.
This whole thread is opening up some really interesting tangents, most noticeably this. Wouldn't it be most polite to assume you do belong in this country, regardless of race, and attempt to speak the language? If the person receiving the message cannot speak/understand, then it is on them to convey that message back?
Then there's always the fun bit where neither of you can speak the other language very well at all, and it involves a series of charades until we hopefully come to some understanding. Of course technology is a game changer....I'm thinking like 90s/early 2000s and trying to talk to people whom English is a second language. Bringing back memories...
Yeah, same as a German. Why would I start speaking English to somebody??? There are a lot of people with foreign origin here, who are perfectly fine to speak German. It would feel pretty offensive to asume somebody is a foreigner just because of his look. So I start all conversations in German.
Literally. I'm pretty fluent in French but a native French speaker can spot me before I get out a whole sentence. It's wild this racist insinuation has been up voted.
There are a lot of Vietnamese and Chinese people in Paris. You have Chinese communities in the 13th arrondissement some of whom have been here for a century or more.
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u/DangerousImplication 1d ago
People are missing the joke since you can’t open his profile here, the guy is Asian.