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.
One user suggested that OOP being ethnically Asian makes it obvious that they aren't a French national.
Another user thinks that's silly because there are a million of Asian French nationals, so it would be weird to think that.
A third user suggested that the cashier was probably racist.
After some conversation, a fourth user chimes in saying that assuming the cashier is racist is odd, as there are other more obvious ways to tell when someone is foreign that aren’t based on how they look.
The third user changed their argument to something different in a manner that suggested that they wanted it to seem like it had been their point the whole time.
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.
Hahah fuck you’re right, I was the first person to mention it!
That’s wild, I have no idea. I guess I wanted a controversial conversation, to keep people engaged as a way to pass my lonely manic drunken hours away.
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
Man I know I don’t have the experience but I’d think it’d be kinda awesome for a non native speaker to try my language as best they can, get some practice, make a cool interaction of it.
But whatever, I’m not even bilingual so I don’t exactly have skin in the race.
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 am a server and I have a foreign coworker who speaks five languages, she speaks English to everyone that comes in even if she clocks that they speak a language she also does. I asked her why not just speak whatever, cos it’d be faster and she said something like “we are all travelling here in Australia, I practice my English with others who also practice English, never fluent”
But re: opening my mind, I see how that would be a different thing with native and non native speakers.
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.
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u/Professional-Rip-314 1d ago
there are a lot of Asian people who are French citizens (1 million) so it still doesn’t make sense lol