[deleted]
It's important!
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Godric@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2ee53bf3-002f-4f82-9021-02e80b94f3bf.jpeg
Comments
razorcandy@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Grostleton@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
RVGamer06@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
sundray@lemmus.org 3 weeks ago
I once said “bonjour” to a friend of mine, and a nearby French woman gave me a thumbs-up, and that has sustained my pride in the years since.
BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Congrats, you are now Flemish!
To give some context: in Belgium there is two main regions, Flanders and Wallonia. Flemish people speaks Flemish Dutch and Walloons speak French.
Since Flemish Dutch and French are the two official language of Belgium a lot of Fleming are learning French as a secondary language to be able to communicate with Walloons. Walloons on the other hand don’t care to learn Flemish Dutch at all.
So as consequence a lot of Flemish do know French but refuse to speak French with Walloons.
So as a French person I ended several time in a situation where I’m trying to communicate in English with a Fleming who refuse to use French with me, until he realize by my accent that I’m not Walloons, then he would start speaking to be in French.
Godric@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s fantastic, thank you!
LarsIsCool@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I know a Wallonian that does the opposite: she lives in the Netherlands, reads, understands, and is able to speak Dutch, but she still will only speak English (or French)
SirDankbud@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
This was my grandma. She married a Quebecois man who was ESL and raised his french kids from a previous marriage all while refusing to ever utter a single syllable in their language. You could ask her anything in french and she would clearly understand and respond in english. She spent sixty years living with and loving french speakers but she never slipped, not even a bonjour. She also refused to ever say why. We waited until my grandfather passed to bury her ashes because we were certain if we left her alone at the family plot in rural Quebec she would find a way to make us regret it.
nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Relatable. I was forced to learn French in school so I’ve always hated it out of principle, but at least our teacher was a legitimate Frenchwoman and could bring out the sound and the melody of it. Quebecois, OTH, is a legitimate abortion of the language. Take the most abominable dialect of the English language you’ve ever heard and Quebecois still sounds 10x worse than that. Not even I could butcher the language with that much hatred and disrespect.
Godric@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s really neat, your grandma sounds lovely!
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Understandable. Quebecois is to French what vomit is to food.
SorryQuick@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
There are plenty of dialects in france similar to or worse than Quebecois. Maybe I’m biased, but to me parisian french is the one that sounds bad. In the end it was the accent of the nobility, hence why it sounds so pompous, while Quebecois was the accent of the commoners.
serendepity@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I take pride in my Quebecois accent tyvm. It’s the accent of the common man and it helps me avoid the unbearable snobs who sneer at people for having the gall to speak differently to them.
OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sammy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Ah I was going to post this. Bless him ❤️
cenzorrll@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
That last sentence. Perfection.
danhab99@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Shit you’re going to have me learning French now
Fuck the French
Valmond@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They’re great lovers so why not?
edinbruh@feddit.it 2 weeks ago
He’s getting the french culture alright
thefluffiest@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
That’s such a French attitude. Gotta love it
JATtho@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Now, provide an example that you cannot, is impossible, to translate into French.
And I’ll accept your claim of unknowing is better than knowing.
Godric@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
“Wow, I really think the English have the best cuisine in the world”
GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Gigachad honestly
Kenny2999@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
CandleTiger@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Insert Sartre
joke_serious philosophical statement _ here“I’m sorry, we’re out of cream. Would you like your coffee with no milk, instead?”
FosterMolasses@leminal.space 2 weeks ago
Literally me
Valmond@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Non.
BootLoop@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Me studying French so
that I can refuse to speak itI immediately get a response in English whenever I attempt to speak itcobysev@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I was stationed in Germany with the US military once, just 30 minutes from the French border. My American coworkers visited Paris and complained that everyone there were snobbish assholes. Every time they tried to ask someone for directions, they got ignored at best and insulted at worst.
My wife and I went to Paris a few times and we had the complete opposite experience. We both took several years of French in high school, so we had an extremely basic knowledge of the French language (thanks, American public schools! 🙄) and we tried to speak to people in French.
Every time we spoke up, they would notice us struggling and immediately switch to English for us. And then they were very helpful. Turns out, my coworkers were just speaking English to French people and expecting a response in English. Which insulted a lot of French people, so they ignored them.
TL;DR: Speak the local language as best you can and French people can be very nice and helpful. Just assume they’ll speak English and you’ll get some rude responses in kind.
Evkob@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
French is my first language, Parisians were still assholes who switched to English because they didn’t like the way I spoke French.
Everyone outside Paris was cool, but I totally get the stereotypes about Parisians. I don’t entirely blame them, living in a city that gets that much tourism must suck, but I am still salty at the guy working in a pizza place who served our party entirely in broken English despite us only speaking French to him.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
😐
Hmmm
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
I had shitty American school French when I went to Paris and I did my best, and nearly everyone said they didn’t speak any English which I knew was a fucking lie. I have since decided not to speak French. I’ve still got Dutch, German, Korean and a little bit of Norwegian on top of English. France is the only country in Europe I don’t want to visit again. Rural France was better but I still don’t plan to go back.
mang0@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I’ve had an experience where I simply asked a french cashier if they spoke english and she threw a fit. Spoke to me in French and mixed my items with the next customer’s.
SippyCup@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
In my experience,French people in Paris really don’t want you speaking French. They almost all speak English and find bad accents irritating.
When we got to our hotel I went to the front desk and said “hey I’m sorry I don’t speak much French but we have a reservation.” And the lady who was Swiss looked at me and said “but you’re speaking French now” and proceeded to tell me a bunch of stuff. Then she saw my face and started laughing. That little razz was one of the highlights of that trip. Any time I spoke French to anyone else they would wince and switch to English. Except for the Italian guy at one of the restaurants we went to, he was pretty cool about it.
Outside of Paris, the French people were really cool about working with my bad, broken French. Possibly because they didn’t speak any more English than I did French. Usually less.
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I am actually fully bilingual eng/fr, went to school in french, but have a particular regional Canadian accent. Whenever in France, everyone responds in English anyways. They don’t like the accent at all. After ordering a beer at a bar in the latin quarter after checking into my hotel, an older woman sitting at the bar as a customer turned to me and said “Vous parlez mal”. i.e. You speak badly.
baldingpudenda@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In my year learning French at school, I befriended someone in toulouse and we’d have quick occasional video chats. The face she made while i was talking made it seem like i was doing nails on chalkboard. She visibly squirmed a bit.
My teacher on the other hand noticed I pronounced certain words in a toulousian accent and was pleased. Apparently it’s a nice accent. It’s too bad i didn’t keep going. Could have visited France and terrorized the locals by forcing them to listen to me speak.
Enoril@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
It takes me about 15min before being able to understand the canadian accent and stop trying to recognize every words. That requires a lot of concentration to decipher each words. During my first meeting with Canadians, we had to switch back to English has it was easier to understand.
It’s like when you talk to an old farmer lost in the middle of nowhere and you need subtitles to understand the words. That requires practice!
SorryQuick@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
It’s funny that she would think that our french is worse than theirs, when canadian french is closer to actual french than parisian french.
CubitOom@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I was told my pronunciation was fine but what gave me away as an American was how long I took to say bonjour.
Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 3 weeks ago
Now i wonder jow long you take to say bonjour
cobysev@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Image
Godric@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Bong-sewer!
Soapbox@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
That’s pretty much why I am studying it.
socsa@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Me, understanding that my superpower is that I feed on sarcasm and eye rolls.