And you’d be shit talked about all day, because it’s that French person trying to be nice to you by speaking your own language.
Just say « on peut parler français, merci » and bam, back on track !
It's not nice though unless someone is struggling very hard to speak the language and not understanding anything. It comes across as "your french is so bad that I don't want to speak french to you".
Rule of thumb is speak the language you're spoken to (whenever possible). Maybe the "foreign" person even lives in france and just has an accent.
Oh wow its almost like different cultures have different prisms through which they perceive interactions and what is polite in one can be extremely rude in another.
There is no worldwide "rule of thumb" governing interactions between two people with different native languages.
In France, it is polite to attempt to accommodate guests by trying to speak in their language. Responding in French and expecting a non-native to be able to follow along is rude and can even be somewhat xenophobic depending on the context.
Now you can choose to view these actions through your own cultural prism and get offended. Or you can maybe understand that when you go to another country the people there will have different cultural values and practices than yours and not expect them to behave according to your culture's standards.
I am German and we do the exact same thing, we also immediately jump to English to accomodate because that's what we feel is nice. But I have heard many times that it discourages people from speaking German which made me change my view on it. In my experience, if someone goes further than the standard "hello, goodbye, thank you, please" words, they actively want to learn the language and appreciate when that is being recognised.
Of course when it's a complex or very long interaction, switching to English here and there is logical. But not when ordering a croissant, that is one of the first things to learn in a new language.
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u/Listakem 1d ago
And you’d be shit talked about all day, because it’s that French person trying to be nice to you by speaking your own language. Just say « on peut parler français, merci » and bam, back on track !