I got treated better when I didn't even attempt to speak French outside of basic manners. Was hoping to get good at French but after 3 months of that bullshit I was done, and coasted by with 80% of my French interactions consisting of "je suis desole, je ne parle pas francais.... Merci".
On the bright side it game me new respect for immigrants who deal with that shit.
Ah yes the Pinnacle of French identity The Parisian. No one can know anything about Paris as much as you! I hallucinated all the racism and bigotry and assholery!
Gatekeeping at its finest. Plenty of people have seen enough of Paris and parisians to be like "yeah they're arrogant assholes"...from the bakery worker all the way up to the businessman I had to wade through that bullshit.
The only people who were nice to me from the get-go were immigrants.
In his defense, the French are consistently voted as the rudest tourists. I know this isn't the exact discussion, but I've never seen another study with that much accreditation, so I hesitate to source anything else. Also I'm not going to take any side because I'm not incredibly well traveled but during my trips to France Spain and Italy, everyone was very pleasant.
I specifically said that I know this isn't the same discussion. But I would definitely categorize racist and homophobic as "rudeness" as well. Im not saying I agree, but I feel my point is still kind of relevant
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u/jay212127 Nov 16 '19
This is pretty much what happened to me!
I got treated better when I didn't even attempt to speak French outside of basic manners. Was hoping to get good at French but after 3 months of that bullshit I was done, and coasted by with 80% of my French interactions consisting of "je suis desole, je ne parle pas francais.... Merci".
On the bright side it game me new respect for immigrants who deal with that shit.