this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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I went to Paris once, and despite everything I had heard my whole life, if you start off with a Bonjour and end with a Merci, in between, the locals are almost all perfectly happy to speak English with you.
I’m sure I say these things with a thick American accent so they all know not to continue too much further in French.
"I'd much rather stumble around in English than witness whatever the fuck you're about to do to my mother tongue" - the French
But yes, a simple "Parlez vous anglais?" puts most conversations firmly in friendly territory. It's entitlement that puts most people off.
Yeah most people are self conscious about their accent/vocabulary so if you roll in speaking English it kinda feels like you're going "hey I expect you to bend over backwards to try to speak my language while I'm visiting your country" which is of course even worse if they're working at the time. Opening with any attempt to speak French shows that you're willing to accommodate them and the person will immediately be more relaxed at the idea of exposing just how bad their English is.
That's a Paris thing
Go even a meter outside the city and people will pretty much ignore you when you don't talk french
Source: the bunch of French people I know
Say something to prove you've never been to france without saying you've never been to france.
Definitely been there multiple times.
Plus I know people who live there their whole life
Really, alors vous pouvez sur et certain me dire que la majorité des français hors de Paris sont ceux qui traitent les étrangers qui ne parlent pas le français comme les Parisiens étaient bien connu partout en france pour traiter les étrangers pour des décennies? Cool good to know you know someone therefor confidently incorrect, I can tell you this by having lived there and having family there both in Paris and its suburbs and other places within the country. But please tell me more about france from your perspective.
Seems like you're both describing lived experiences. France is a big place. Some of it is pretty easy to get by with apologetic English, some bits they really don't speak the language and you're gonna have to find an app or something.
To graduate highschool in france you need to have taken and passed at least 6 years of one secondary language and 4 of a third, most take English for one of those languages and culturally the place most known for the snobbish behaviour historically is Paris, from supressing other languages in France such as Catalan, Basque, Occitan, Breton, Normand, or Frankish, which have begun to disappear completely over the last 200-300 years in favor of the modern French of Paris. Paris culture has a long history of thinking it is the best culture in France and above others in Europe, the term langue franc or lingua franca comes from Parisian French being the primary international language, calling everything from Haitian, Occitan, Normand, and other similar languages as a Patoi a french, a term meaning a derivative of the French language when. Occitan and Frankish are much older languages than French and in the case of Frankish is a language that evolved into French.
Now with that bit of history and culture out of the way, which shows the suppression of other internal cultures if you want to call it that and erasure of their languages from public use and the elevation of French, which came with the centralization of political and economic power in France in Paris, it lead to a culture within Paris that started with the capital of the monarchy permanently setting up their bureaucratic institutions there then the revolutions starting there, leading to a major cultural centralization there and a sense of superiority compared to the rest of france which endures to this day, be it someone from Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Dinon, Lyon, or elsewhere the Parisian culture sees those major cities as secondary in cultural additions to prance and Paris as the jewel in the crown. This sort of cultural snobbery led to other regions of France, while maybe less able to speak English in the past than Paris, having a less snobbish attitude than Paris, as well as a more friendly attitude to foreigners as a whole (look up the 1961 Paris Massacre for more context)
I went to the many places in small villages, think about 200 people there, and was welcomed with open arms. My French was bad but with trying to talk with hands and feet in English and French did a lot. They learned English and I learned French.
...
Viva la France
Viva las vegas
Vive la france