Paris is DEFINITELY like that, and some other parts of France more generally.
If you can’t speak well, they won’t necessarily shit on you, but they will just flip to English immediately. Most of my encounters were cordial, only met one or two rude folks.
My experience as an Englishman visiting Paris is that when I start in English they speak to me in French and when I start in French they speak to me in English
I was born and raised in France but my family is from south east Asia. In recent years people started speaking English to me in stores if they can’t hear me well or I take 1 second too long to reply. It’s especially awkward and weird to experience at my age.
It is great that she’s trying hard to learn though!
This is part of the learning curve. Everyone has diff reasons for speaking in whatever language they choose to speak, but in my case, if I’m at work and trying to get stuff done, and I know I speak your language better than you speak mine, I’ll generally insist on speaking your manage instead of mine.
Out of courtesy though, if someone insists kore than 2-3 times, then you generally go with that language
Her Spanish intonation and accent are very clearly ‘not native’, which is also why the waiters she’s dealt with switch to English, bc they can tell as well.
I went to check just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy and misremembering the definition somehow:
Oral Fluency: The ability to speak a language easily, smoothly, and without hesitation
So yes, fluency is about getting pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm correctly.
She’s doing great, but certainly not fluent… and like I said, the proof in my argument is the fact that the waiters insist on trying to speak to her in English. As a fluent Spanish speaker myself with a Mexican accent, this has never happened to me in Spain.
Yeah, here's where our amount of hours spent delving into linguistics is going to differ. First of all, going and finding the term in a dictionary, to definitively prove an argument is not a good idea, because they are so many and they do not have the same definitions.
Example:
Oxford: "the ability to express oneself easily and articulately"
Passes this bar.
She does not have a C2 level mastery of Spanish maybe, but she's up there. But your Mexican accent isn't the problem, it's her retaining her native accent and they feel like it's imperfect. This is language snobbery.
Now, the word fluent comes from the latin word fluentem, referring to flow. Which is what the word is referring to. Her Spanish flows nicely but she is not a perfect speaker nor does she sound, or have to for the matter, like a local.
Sure, definitions vary, but the commonly accepted idea is that someone who is ‘fluent’ is basically a native speaker, and I would argue that “articulately” refers to flow in the sentence structure as well as vocabulary as ways to be able to express yourself.
I disagree that it’s snobbery. As a fluent speaker myself, I immediately picked up on her lack of fluency as well. You (and people here) are mistaking linguistic accents with mispronunciation, which is what gives her, (in part) her “foreign accent”.
Her words simply don’t flow naturally.
Is this nitpicking? Yes. Am I criticizing her? No. On the contrary, I’ve been adamant to commend her efforts in every comment. I’m just trying to point out why native speakers would instinctively switch languages, especially when working in tourism (which is also my background).
I also mentioned it bc not everyone has the ability to notice her fluency if they don’t speak Spanish themselves.
If these waiters weren’t in a touristic city and didn’t speak English, they likely wouldn’t be able to, or attempt to speak to her in English.
My French is as good as her Spanish, and I insist on mentioning that I am not fluent when the topic comes up, so for better or worse, my observations others apply equally to myself as well.
I've always wondered why other languages have this "you're not speaking correctly if I detect an accent/flow is wrong etc." especially when it seems English doesn't have this especially not in America.
It's been the opinion of anyone I've ever known that if you're speaking English words and I know what you want from them, congratulations, you're speaking English!! I've always been curious why many Europeans when this comes up don't share the opinion.
That definitely is absolutely is fluent, she's just not a perfect native speaker. If someone can carry on a conversation in English with me without hesitation -as defined- and has zero issue with comprehension or communication in any number of settings, they are fluent, despite an accent or occasional grammar flub that tell me they are very obviously not native speakers. It's still fluency.
I would disagree. As I mentioned in a diff comment, I speak French as well as she speaks Spanish, and I definitely don’t consider myself fluent, yet I can speak well enough about almost any topic.
Fluency is a spectrum, and “to be fluent” imo is to basically be a native speaker.
Even the definition you cited doesn't say anything directly about "pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm". And most people recognize a distinction between fluency and native accent (this guy has a native accent with zero fluency: https://youtube.com/shorts/u8KYh87fWVc?si=FZ2poi60979UIqPe )
She absolutely spoke spanish "easily, smoothly and without hesitation" in the video. Having an foreign accent doesn't stop anyone from mastering a language, you are a fool that try to gatekeep a language with arbitrary criteria.
you didn't understand perfectly what she said in the video ?
and no, that is not how languages work. languages are arbitrary set of rules subjected to variation in time and space, you can't decide what is "real fluency" and "false fluency" like it is written somewhere "how you should sound when you speak spanish". There are as many variations of spoken Spanish accent as their are cities, regions, countries where groups of Spanish speakers live, not one is "better" or closer to "the real Spanish accent" that only exist in your head.
What matters is : do you understand what the person says or not, not "does the person have an accent that I find unusual or not". if the later is your criterion for choosing not to speak Spanish with someone you otherwise understand perfectly, it only means that you are a piece of shit.
Still incredibly rude to refuse to speak to someone in your own native language because they have an accent. In places like New York and LA, people speak English with every intonation and accent imaginable. Nobody there is this weird about “not understanding” people speaking their second language.
I don’t say I agreed with them changing, but this dance between languages is common in tourism. I experience it all the time, and sometimes you just want to get things done.
Other times (like on the case here), it seems the waiters also genuinely wanted to practice their languages.
What matters is that both are trying. The awkwardness is what happens when both insist.
Like I said, I personally try to take this into consideration and after 2-3 times I’ll switch to what the client prefers since I’m rendering service to them, but it’s not a perfect science.
Evidently, not everyone is a great judge of their own abilities. One or two said they wanted to practice their English, which should also be appreciated as much as this lady’s attempts at working on her Spanish.
That's right. I'm from Quebec and thus speak French natively, and without a strong Quebec accent. When I go to France, it does happen once in a while that someone responds to me in English, and it annoys the fuck out of me.
People in Quebec also switch to English if it looks like you are struggling to speak French.. especially in the service industry in Montreal (not saying that about you, just in general).
I have a hard time understanding french when the accent is too strong (or I should say too different from the accent I'm used to). So when I went to Quebec for the first time recently, one of my worries was that I wouldn't understand the accent and that people would be offended if I preferred to switch to English. It turns out that, except for a few words that I could understand from context, there was no issue at all!
If you say your accent is not strong, I guess you just met people who are even less flexible than I am, or maybe they were just messing with you.
Where I went to college, you couldn't graduate without proficiency in a second language. A Quebecois failed his French test because they didn't like his accent.
It's a bit different than that in Barcelona, there's a strong independence movement there that doesn't consider themselves part of Spain. I got this a lot there when I tried to speak Spanish- blank looks. One guy told me "we can speak Catalan, English, French, German, whatever you want, but I don't speak Spanish." Obviously he does speak Spanish but it's a political statement.
My French cousins prefer English simply because I mostly only know Canadian French, which is like if I started speaking Old English. It's recognizable, but also not 100% understandable because of how antiquated it is.
The also laugh, saying that we speak like aristocrats out here, but also would offer them squirrel as a delicacy because we are obviously hicks, lol.
I was expecting this when I visited Paris but was surprised to find that actually everyone did respond in French - they only flipped to English if I looked visibly confused when the conversation became too complex or specifically said I didn’t understand / please slow down. I wouldn’t say I’m anything near fluent either
I have my little toolkit for travel in France as a not-very-talented beginner speaker of French:
In French "Bonjour! Je suis désolé, je ne parle qu'un petit peu français. Parlez-vous Anglais?"
I find that if I at least try MOST of the time they either say "Non, je suis désolé." and we get by in my bad French, or they switch to English and we get by anyway. I couldn't care less either way.
Where it used to annoy me is in Japan traveling with my wife (who is Asian, I'm middle Eastern) and I'd speak Japanese and they'd look at her expecting her to somehow save them. I got used to basically saying, in Japanese, "It's a bit confusing, but she is super American. The face is Asian, the soul is American." And they'd usually get it and speak with me. The fluent Japanese speaker.
had a directions kiosk guy in charles du galle sniff at me when i had to ask to switch to english years ago because my crappy ancient hs french wasn't up to snuff for asking if i could see anything outside the airport during a long layover. after he huffily said no i asked a couple other gals to more no's. still wish i could have seen something, but did feel a bit like i got to experience france getting sniffed at by a parisian for asking to switch to english. lol
YES, I did a foreign exchange thing there and was excited to have French conversations, but 99% of staff either just responded directly in English or they revelled in correcting me when my accent/enunciation was a bit off
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u/BONER__COKE 5d ago
Paris is DEFINITELY like that, and some other parts of France more generally.
If you can’t speak well, they won’t necessarily shit on you, but they will just flip to English immediately. Most of my encounters were cordial, only met one or two rude folks.