I once accidentally spoke french to a waitress in Greece then apologised and said I wasn't actually french. She went on a ten minute diatribe about how french people are the bane of her life because they refuse to speak English with her and just get louder and louder in french 😂
As a Belgian, I noticed that people usually get warmer when they learn I'm not French.
Hopefully the cliche will change over time.
It's like the Canadians when they don't want people to think they're Americans. Some Americans even pretend they're Canadian for the same reason. I'm French and I knew about these for a long time but never thought of the parallel with France/Belgium. Damn I might start using this and just say I'm Belgian haha.
This would happen in Austria as well.
Seems strange to have Italy and Spain here, the English proficiency is usually at the same levels than France.
It's not that they can't speak English, the cliché (at least in the past) is that they refuse to speak it. Spanish people are probably worse when it comes to English proficiency these days.
Spanish people are probably worse when it comes to English proficiency these days.
Probably, people are always surprised that they have to speak Spanish even in some touristy areas.
But Spanish and Italians will try if you approach them in English
From my travelling experience. Italians and Spanish talk to people in English. I think once an Italian was using a Spaniard to help with their poor English. But they are better than the French and a lot more willing.
I find the French (guys) if they do talk to you they are telling you some horrific story about how they fucked some bird or how they want to fuck some bird, or talk about how everyone hates them because they are French but this after doing something to make everyone hate them personally. But normally they just hang out in a big obnoxious groups.
Weirdly. All these problems I've had with French guys, French girls seem great.
to you they are telling you some horrific story about how they fucked some bird or how they want to fuck some bird
Wait, what? Never heard of this before
Lol spanish and italians speak shit english.
If at all. At least in Italy, outside of tourist areas or quite often even in tourist areas, you'd have to point and wave to talk or use a translation app. Even 20 somethings barely understood any english.
I lived in spain for 4 months in a tourist spot(out of season) and they couldnt understand our english. They had shops with signs like "we speak english" but they didnt. At least italian is easier to understand with english than spanish. And then theres the french who speak perfect english but refuse to.
It's not our fault that the Latin-Germanic barrier is so difficult to overcome
I'm not sure what this joke is about. France has wanted to keep English as a language of the EU (whose flag is at the top) despite Brexit.
It's about French people sucking tremendously at English.
Source : I'm French, and they don't even try to speak it most of the time, pretty well known. Meanwhile, I went to Germany and actually had trouble finding someone 35 and less that didn't speak English.
Afaik french officials within the EU commission tried to push french in meetings for a while after Brexit, but didnt have particular success
I live in Montreal, my experience is that French people speak great English while most Quebecers can't ask for the bathroom in English. Of course, the French people coming here are generally open minded compared to Jean-Guy from Brossard who not only shoots you a "yes-no-toaster" when you ask him if he speaks English but also thinks it's the funniest thing he's ever said.
My experience with the French is that they're happy to speak English if you say something like "Excusez-moi, perlez vous anglais?" but may pretent to not understand you if you just start in English.
Which is actually pretty fair when I think about it.
Very true. English speakers are sometimes taken aback, but it's usually a way to show respect to the local language, and acknowledge that you are asking them a favor to speak a second language.
True. I speak French fluently but prefer English so we usually flip between the two and my experience was more about how well they speak and not really how quick they are to. I'm sure my results will vary if I actually go to France, I've heard horror stories from my fellow Quebecers.
Montreal is an exceptionally nice place.
I couldn't stop in the street to look at a map without someone coming to see if I needed help. I didn't I just needed to look at it, but in 10 seconds it took me someone would offer help.
I actually considered trying to movie there but I realised I need to also be fluent in French.
That's up there as among the greatest cities I've ever been to. Sydney is my number 1 but Montreal can't compare to the surf in Sydney so it's not a fair comparison.
Maybe they just don't like the québécois accent, it certainly has a very distinct sound.
Idk about the rest but Spanish people suck at English.
Italians have more or less the same level.
It is probably due to the fact that Romance languages are further from English than Germanic languages like Dutch and German.
Finnish and Estonian are basically completely unrelated to English yet the native speakers of those languages are pretty good at English for the most part.
Yet for some reason, in Hungary, it's either Hungarian or bust (guess what, it's related to the two languages I mentioned at the beginning). So... honestly I have no idea what's happening here.
Also, Germany and Austria speak the same native language; German, yet there are more L2 English speakers in Austria than in Germany. It's the same as comparing France with francophone Belgium.
Portuguese is also a Latin laguange and Portuguese are much more proficient in English than Spanish, French and Italians. The main reason, imo, is that these countries dub all movies, series, etc, so they basically never listen to English nor are they interested to. In Portugal we rarely dub anything and just use subtitles. So it's much easier for us to understand and speak english because we're much more used to listen to it. It's probably the same thing for the eastern countries as mentioned above. Now, why do these countries dub everything I don't know but if they didn't we'd probably be on the same level
It doesn't always work the same both ways, but the US Foreign Service Insititute (the government agency that teaches languages to diplomatic workers) claims that the easiest languages for native english speakers to learn are the romance languages, nordic languages, and dutch.
German is category 2.
Reasons for this are that English has a huge amount of influence from romance languages (mostly French), so a large portion of the vocabulary is similar. It tends to be that the 'small' words are germanic, while the 'meaty' or 'meaningful' words are romance.
Also the modern grammar is generally more similar to romance languages than German, as German retains much more of the old germanic case system.
Or because Italians are ignorant
English has French in it eh 1066
Italians outside of Italy maybe, or young people. Older Italians won't talk in English even with a gun pointed to their head. Had a bus driver tell me to talk to him in English and he would answer in Italian, wth
Kun kiom bela estas Esperanto kaj ni uzas la anglan kiel barbaroj
Ne ĉiuj de ni! Estas ribeluloj ĉie.
What's funnier is when the american cousins come to visit and all sound like old people because they learned the local language as it was before national standardization
The fun thing is that you wrote "standardization" the american way :)
Can’t agree on Spanish people here. Even the younger ones refuses or just really suck at speaking English. I talked to elderly people in Portugal in English and was not a problem. The younger people in Portugal are at least at a basic level. I am learning Spanish at the moment and I would say both languages share a lot of words. So knowing English helps me a lot understanding Spanish words.
Mince alors!
Not sure how it's these days, but I've been in rural France for a week 20 years ago as a teen and if it wasn't for one lady speaking English I'd almost starve there. My english wasn't particularly great, but my french was really bad and I knew it. Every single French I met there refused to acknowledge that and kept on spitting french pretty damn fast and kept it going faster every time I missed the point. Terrible, terrible experience.
My French is rusty. So I'm not totally sure what he said not something speaking French? IDK. I live in Canada. There's no French here.
None at all. Not even in Quebec.
Especially not in Quebec.
They don't (know how to) speak French.
Thanks, IDK why savent was giving me so much trouble. My brain was just unable to can.
Sacré bleu
