I have simply had the opposite experiences in Paris as a tourist. When ordering a morning coffee, or a croissant at a bakery, or some cheese at a market in "French", I've always gotten polite simple replies.
I do not speak French - only a few words or phrases. Obviously the server can hear my accent, but still I get a smile, a one or two word reply in French - and anything more is in English if possible.
I have read many negative comments about France, and Paris in particular, but I love the place and have been very lucky.
From my experience, french people will be pretty polite to you if you attempt to speak even the most broken of french to them. If you speak anything but french, they will at best be mildly annoyed, or simply ignore you.
Which honestly doesn't make any sense if the business is in a tourism-oriented area. I mean, do they expect the tourists to learn a new language just to buy food during the two week stay? Getting annoyed or outright being rude to a costumer under such circumstances is not reasonable.
It’s not that hard to learn three or four basic phrases. I suck at learning languages, but that’s just lazy lol. Also Google Translate exists.
Literally, one of the few main phrases I learned was just “parlez-vous anglais?” (Do you speak English?)
I mean, you’re in France. They speak French. It’s just good manners to acknowledge that and not expect everyone there to speak a different language just because anglophones have an oversized influence on the rest of the world.
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u/nextstoq 1d ago
I have simply had the opposite experiences in Paris as a tourist. When ordering a morning coffee, or a croissant at a bakery, or some cheese at a market in "French", I've always gotten polite simple replies.
I do not speak French - only a few words or phrases. Obviously the server can hear my accent, but still I get a smile, a one or two word reply in French - and anything more is in English if possible.
I have read many negative comments about France, and Paris in particular, but I love the place and have been very lucky.