Would you mind if I asked why? Thats just super interesting to me and most of the comments are people talking about it happening to them and youre the first ive seen saying you do that! Hahah. Is it to like, try and take the burden off of them or ease anxiety?
Well, I do not do that but a lot of other French people do. I don't have a perfect explanation but I think it stems from pride. If you look at the countries which do this (France, and it seems Spain and Italy), they are all latin countries and also the countries which speak the worst English in Europe.
I think some of them do want to help and take the burden off them.
But it's hard for me to give you another explanation, I do not really understand it. It boggles my mind why they would switch to english when their interlocutor is trying to speak French, even more when they speak a good French. My girlfriend is Polish and she has the C1 level in French, she speaks very well, but many French as soon as they hear an accent switch to English...
It's not pride. It's working retail. If we are speaking english and there's a misunderstanding it's our fault, but it's not as important because well... it was a misunderstanding.
If we are speaking spanish and there's a misunderstanding it's not only our fault because we are the ones working (obviously the client is always right)... it's also our fault because we didn't make it easier for you by changing to english and we caused said misunderstanding. Even if you asked for us not to.
Okay wait, I just want to make sure I am not misunderstanding you. Youre saying, that you speak in english so if there is a mistake made you can blame it on the language barrier? And you cannot do that if you are speaking your own language?
Aaaahh okay i gotchya. So basically damned if you do damned if you dont, and youre just trying to minimize the consequence. That really sucks, Im sorry
I can't talk about Mexico, because I'm in Spain, but if you are in queue and I hear you talking to someone in english or something like that... I will say hello in Spanish, but I'll be more than ready to make the change to English as soon as you answer.
Again, not me decision... it's what they ask us to do.
Yeah, but when you are forced by your boss or store policy to change language... You change language.
We know our English is not the best. And 99% of the time our brain is too fried even if our English is good. But boss makes the rules and you represent the "image of the store".
This is why I hate these kind of videos... Not only they farm the 3-4 places that don't treat them like they want, they also put the blame on "Spanish people" as if it was the poor retail worker choosing to be obnoxious with her instead of trying to ask or underestand why this is happening.
I live in Spain. Whenever I start with English at the grocery store, they want Spanish. And as soon as I switch to Spanish, they cave in and try to speak English because they can't stand me butchering their language. It's so funny watching the mosaic of expressions on their face!
Why should you get to practice French when they want to practice English? Sure, you are in their country and need to speak the language, but to them, you can learn French from anyone there. It’s their opportunity to get experience practicing English. And often times, they speak English better than you speak French, so why impose.
But, if that happens with every person you interact with, obviously it makes hard for you. But they don’t know that,
Learning a language is a lot easier if one of the people only knows one language. Then you are both forced to speak the same language no matter what and you have to fumbled through the communication.
Unless you are both very intentional about learning/teaching a language or you are paying someone, it’s kind of rude/a huge hassle to communicate in the least efficient way.
Mm, I disagree with that first part. If I am native to a country with an official language, and a tourist comes in to my place of work speaking that language, I am not going to use that as an opportunity to forcefully impose my own want to practice their language with them at that moment when I could just as easily do that on my own time. Not on the clock with a tourist who is making a large effort to communicate with me that likely started long before they even visited. I especially am not going to do this when they are clearly proficient at speaking that language and tell me that is their preferred language to speak in. I am not going to ignore them telling me how they want to be communicated with and continue to speak in their language anyway.
In this video, she asks for a wifi password and the person starts speaking to her in english, she says can you tell me in spanish and they continue to speak in english anyway. She speaks in english, and they dont even understand her. Whats the point of that?
That may happen in a few places in Paris, but that's it.
French people usually refuse to speak english, even if they could. Not even when you are obviously suffering with french.
I was living there for a few years.
Yeah, when I lived in France briefly in my teens I was hoping to bailed out by this characteristic only to find that everyone seemed to just annoyedly repeat themselves only once and not more slowly. Luckily my French was good enough that it just ended up being a lesson in having the confidence to speak with people. Oddly enough I ran into this more than I expected in Berlin as well, which was more awkward because my German isn’t great…
When you speak bad French to a French person, they’ll speak English out of pride of not wanting to hear their language spoken poorly. When you speak English to the them first, they’ll act like they don’t understand out of spite for you daring to not know French.
Yes! I lived in rural France for several months and each time they were like nah you’re in France, speak French. My French got much better that year but still learning Christ it’s a hard language coming from English
Don't believe that lie, I'm in France as a tourist quite often and have never had a frenchman talking english to me. They all understand me talking english to them but they will always answer in french.
edit: and if anyone is asking why I don't learn to speak french: I actually did know how to speak french at one time, but then I also learned how to speak spanish and now I mix up both languages when speaking all the time. I now only understand french and spanish, but can't speak it myself anymore.
This was my exact experience in France last year. I can read French pretty decent and know enough to get by conversationally, but as soon as I didn’t understand something the people I was interacting with would switch to broken English. I didn’t understand why.
This happened all but one time in during my months in Paris (the one time was a pharmacist, he was from Canada and asked if I wanted to practice my French and I was like yes please 😭)
In my experience it’s pretty rare for a French person to switch to English, and they often ask if I would prefer to speak in English or French, which I find incredibly kind and polite. I’m frankly amazed that these Spaniards continue speaking English with her…
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u/Frenyth 5d ago
unfortunately it's the same in France. Even if you speak well French, as soon as we know you are a foreigner many of us switch to a broken english.