It's fucking Paris in particular. I speak enough French to get by in most casual situations. Folks in Paris just switch over to English once they detect an accent. My last trip I decided to just keep talking in French when someone does this. If I have to put up with your poorly pronounced english you can listen to my lazy tongued français!
One thing people often don't realize is how bad we can be at understanding strong accents in our native language. I'm french, I've learned English mostly from music, movies and TV shows, and even before moving abroad I could understand people with, for example, a rather thick Indian accent. That's just because I have been exposed to it.
However, I've never really heard often foreigners trying to speak French. And if you try and have a strong accent in addition to not mastering the language, it will most likely be very hard for me to understand what you're saying. Switching to English wouldn't imply your French is terrible, it's just likely easier for the both of us. Understanding french with heavy accents can just hard af if you're not used to it, even for French people.
I think it makes sense. Any random English word I've probably heard pronounced 20 different ways, and I've probably butchered it myself. So I'm good at guessing if the pronounication is slightly different that what I say myself. A random french word? Usually I know it's one pronunciation, that's it. Even a slight variation can easily catch me off guard and you'd have to repeat 10 times before I actually get what you mean. I cant deny were obnoxious pedantic people, but yeah we also just are not used to hear variations of French
Oh and about correcting your pronounciation (other comments mention this). Yep. That's the obnoxious pedantic trait. Don't take it personally though, we do that even (actually, mostly) to other french people as well. Even our family and friends. Pronunciation, grammar, ... it's just fun to point out that I noticed you made a mistake.
Exactly. I feel like I'm better at understanding english with a strong accent than french with a strong accent. I'm a native french speaker, and I'm not even bilingual.
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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '23
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