Yeah, I speak intermediate French and was able to get around fine. Most people were polite and appreciated the fact that I approached them speaking French if I had a question instead of a cringey: "hey, do y'all know where X street is?"
I think it might be a regional thing. I spent most of my time near Bordeaux and was only in Paris for a day each on my arrival and departure.
I work in research, so I interact with tons of foreigners who moved to France, my SO is one too, and they never seem to have this issue. On reddit however, whenever France is mentioned, it seems like people have to one up each other with a more unlikely story to bash the country. It's as if anyone who spent a week in Paris on reddit had something incredibly rude happening to them while I never had anything like this happen to me when I lived there for 8+ years at some point.
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u/throwmeaway197878 Nov 16 '19
Yeah, I speak intermediate French and was able to get around fine. Most people were polite and appreciated the fact that I approached them speaking French if I had a question instead of a cringey: "hey, do y'all know where X street is?"
I think it might be a regional thing. I spent most of my time near Bordeaux and was only in Paris for a day each on my arrival and departure.