but in France you have to try to speak French first, get humiliated, and then they tell you to knock it off and just speak your own language
Source: my mom on her high school Europe trip
I had a similar experience a few years back. Even though they tell you to please stop, they would always be very happy and helpful after you attempted to speak French. It’s like you gotta pay the toll or something.
Kinda hate how the two different versions of this I’ve seen lump the Republic of Ireland in with the UK like they don’t have their own language seperate from English.
While Irish is definitely a language that is spoken by many people in Ireland, it’s not quite “main language of the country” level yet so I can see why maps don’t count it
It is the first official language, and the language of government.
Only 170k people have it as their primary language though.
I do think it should be separate in the map though.
Gaelige deserves to thrive.
Gaelic isn’t a language in ireland.
Gaelige (or Irish) is.
Thanks, I didn’t realise.
French people won’t accept communication in any other language than french actually.
Me and my “French taco” with ham, harissa, frites, kebab, and a hamburger patty can attest to that.
Sorry weird fat dude from Calais, je suis réveillé a quatre heures because my kid couldn’t sleep and my brains are merde de chien.
Happy cake day
As someone with 9th grade Canadian core French from 25 years ago, this has not been my experience of the French at all. Not in France, nor in Quebec. What are y’all doing to their language??!?
Those kind of maps are based of stereotypes and memes rather than actual surveys. So always take it with a grain of salt.
We Germans love when foreigner speak German even the pronunciation or grammar isn’t perfect. To be honest most Germans can’t speak perfect German either.
Can confirm. My sister-in-law immigrated to Germany and her German is more proper than that of her native German boyfriend.
I used to work in France a lot. Mainly older people (I delivered stair lifts). It’s surprising how few speak even a single word English. Not just the old folks, but also the stores who sold these items. Many times there was only a single person who spoke English in a company.
Never had a negative reaction to my butchering of their language though. Always very patient and understanding
I’ve found it’s really more of a fact that most French people hate tourists and honestly mad respect for that. The only places I’ve seen French people be rude to anyone trying to speak French are places like the riviera and Paris. Most French people are lovely and patient with me butchering their language.
Personally, I’ve made a conscious decision to never learn French, purely because of how much of a bitch my French (from France, thick accent) teacher was in middle school. She made this girl, that she knew was really dyslexic, read in front of the class to humiliate her. Pretty sure she got fired.
Hardly a world traveller, but Paris is the only place where my butchering of a local language was more effective in communication than their butchering of English.
I LOVED the experience of the tables being turned, where I was the one who sounded slow and uncertain in another language.
Completely masked the reality that I sound slow and uncertain in my native tongue. But THEY’LL never know 😉😉
Same here - positive reactions, especially in France. The one place my schoolgirl French met with hostility was in a youth hostel in rural Quebec. And why was that? “We thought you were from Ontario.”
Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?
That’s my baseline for speaking French. 99% of the time the French are gracious and switch.
The few times someone has responded “non” we use pidgin franglish or pantomime whatever we need to discuss. Haven’t had someone be a jerk about French or English in France for almost 20 years.
In ireland, if someone speaks irish you’ll get a mix between pink and black, because barely anyone knows irish properly here.
But, if you speak it in a Gaeltacht (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeltacht) Its an instant friendship.
Can confirm re: Italy. I scored a bottle of the family wine when I spoke Italian to the guy renting me his cottage for a week.
Nope, Spain falls under “Lets switch to English” especially if you learned Spanish from Latin America…… Stuck up snobs and their Castilian Spanish.
Ahhhh but if you speak butchered Catalan in Catalonia they are so grateful.
It’s true! They are so thrilled. I have an added bonus in that my New Zealand vowels make my few Catalan phrases sound fluent.
Tholo debeth thethearte hathta que inithian a penthar que a) ethtath burlando de eyyos , b) creen que teneth una thetheo o c) creen que hablath como Pato Lukath.
ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn to you as well.
It’s spanish , with phonetic transcription of the lisp.
You just have to lithp until they thtart to think that a) you are making fun of them, b)they think you have a lithp or c) they think you talk like daffy duck
I see you decided to just ignore Cymraeg, which won’t leave anyone indifferent.
Hey, does that include when Québécois speak in France?
I bet it does.
Love you Keebek,
Tabarnak
Ah speak Joual. Not French, or Hanglish.
Why is Monaco grey-ish? It’s not in the legend. Probably because there are no actual people in Monaco, only rich.
their language is money and if you don’t speak it you’re not there cuz you can’t afford to be
… So I should stop trying to learn German?
Nein. Learn German so you can understand German memes.
The biggest German meme community is: [email protected]
I read those memes in /all despite not knowing a word of german.
I can already understand the super basic stuff. Too much guessing though.
No, we do actually appreciate when people speak good German, we just know it’s an absolute pain and want to be nice.
Fair enough. As long as it’s understandable, right?
Nah keep going. Most germans are just excited at the opportunity to speak english, but if you tell them that you would like to practice german, most will understand.
Lived in Germany for over a year.
Id say over 90% of conversations I started in German turned to English. They were all excited to use the english they had learned in school “cause no one wants to speak english but I want to practice my skills”
Like, you all want to speak english, just switch over. Even the kids were more excited to speak english cause everything uses “the”
Der die das is too much to use for even the native speakers haha
