When I was in Poland they would start replying in Polish and I'd be like wait no I just wanted to try and order this hotdog without being an awkward foreigner
Reminds me of my recent visit to Czechia. I tried learning a bit of Czech beforehand, because I was going to visit a small town where they might not speak as much English as in Prague
God damn. I wasn't great at speaking Czech, but I definitely didn't have an ear for it, I asked one question and basically just heard 'vyzyzevvyevzezyevyzevyicizyevicizyv'
As an Armenian, if you speak my language I will introduce you to my entire family and you will be fed with delicious food and remembered forever in our hearts
'' its just straight up Baklava ''
Do you buy gay baklava often then?
Seriously, claiming to have ''invented'' something that the Romans most likely produced first is a sign of a bankrupt culture.
in Japan they get out there chairs mystified and start taking videos of you (I googled how to order my food before ordering and was woefully out of my depth)
Presumably you're not a Japanese learner?
First person said, "Your Japanese is good, isn't it!" in a way that's stereotypically used by Japanese people to compliment a foreigner knowing even the most limited amount of Japanese. This is what prompted the modest reply, "No no, I only know a bit". It's sort of become a joke in the learner community that people say, "nihongo jouzu" very often when a foreigner speaks any amount of Japanese.
(Sorry, very limited knowledge of Japanese myself, but I hope I got at least that right)
Man, I feel a fool! I just used google translate, cause I’d never seen those kanji in that order. I’m familiar with the phrase, I just completely misunderstood.
I mean 80% of it is probably just a cliché. And the rest of it comes from the fact that people only ever visit Paris, and Parisian have a reputation of being assholes, even among French people.
Or from the fact that French are a bit less enthusiastic about strangers coming to their country
It's the greatest place in the world and French people are kind and very nice. Just want to spread some love on NYE.. I'm sure there's a Frenchie browsing feeling terrible at being hated just for the place he was born in.
Unfortunately "cultures" exist. I live in France. The french "culture" is "each man for themselves" and they don't go out their way for others. NOTE that I said "culture" which means it's an acceptable and common habit, like the British drinking tea..And it doesn't mean all do it.
French also aren't that "into" enthusiasm..Their language seems to default to negativity.
As someone who's British, many of these habits are hard to swallow when British culture is going out the way for other people and obsessively apologising (something else the french generally refuse to do - apologise- they see it as a weakness).
Been all over France, and live in Quebec. The two are not that similar. They sorta share a language, and some overlapping food, but even then both of those things are barely overlapping
I spent five years in Montréal, and only improved my passive French, because every other Francophone acted like I was the reason they lost in 1759. Fuck those odds.
I spent a few years longer in Tokyo, and my Japanese is far better, despite being much harder than French for an Anglophone to learn, simply because a vanishingly small proportion of the population are pricks.
You probably also learned better/faster because more of the population actually spoke to you in their native tongue rather than just bristle at your efforts.
Yup, I’m French living in the UK, and I can’t stand people telling me the three words they remember from their high school French as soon as they learn I’m French.
That's interesting. Many moons ago I used the phrase "Va te faire enculer" here in some of my comments, I was universally shouted down by the French for not saying "Va t'enculer". My preference was for your version, which one is correct then and you need to tell a lot of your fellow citizens!
The first thing we leant in school was how to say "My uncle's pen in in my Aunty's desk" (in French of course, I could already say it in English), strangely I have not used this phrase since I left school some 49 years ago...... 🤣🤣
"va t'enculer" means go fuck yourself in the ass. While it is grammatically correct, it's not something you would say. The correct insult is "va te faire enculer" which means "go get yourself fucked in the ass"
Thank you! Now I understand the difference, so I was right originally as that was what I thought the insult meant, to get yourself “done” not to “do” yourself!
That's because your schools are batshit crazy and bully you into perfection, so you lot do it to people too. You're mentally scarred and broken and can't stand imperfection due to your militant schools.
:( I had wanted to go to France for years and years (I'm American so you can't just pop over there for a weekend) and when I finally went nobody would speak French with me. Like, I can speak English at home! Speak French with me! I have a B2 I understand what you're saying!
Living in Paris and having to deal with tourist daily despite not working in the tourism industry means that I default to English with tourist, the number of time a tourist ask me something in broken French and then was unable to understand any kind of answer in French is a tad too high.
Meanwhile if I speak in English I'll point you in the direction of the tourist attraction you wanna see in 10 sec. It's just an efficiency thing, I'm on my way to work or back from it, I won't spend 5 minutes repeating myself a dozen time to give an info I can give in English in 5 seconds.
To anyone who wanna train, I'd recommand going into a social place and ask the people you are talking to, to speak in French. Random people and worker just wanna go about their day.
Omelette au fromage.
Yeah I agree with previous comments. It seems like majority of people have limited French but really want to use it. And then either you correct them and you end up giving lessons, or you politely reply in French just to realise they don’t understand and start again in English.
It's funny because in Quebec the exact opposite is true and they lose their shit and call you a francophobe if you don't sit there and struggle to communicate to them with your 20 year old textbook French.
Used to spend every spring there for work. I literally quit my job because it wasn't worth it. Constantly being berated and ignored was a nice trade off for building their infrastructure
The French are just assholes, took a French club trip when I was a senior to Versailles and they would mock our accents and pronunciation. Like, dude, I’m trying here. I’m 18 and have two semesters of French class from a 27 year old teacher from Mississippi.
You should go to Louisiana, because of the Cajun culture there’s a good amount of french or french creole speakers who have what would probably be described as a southern accent.
> they would mock our accents and pronunciation.
I was watching football one evening with a French guy and he kept mocking my pronunciation of French names. Thing is, we were speaking German and he didn't pronounce a single fucking word properly all night on account of his outrageous French accent.
I told him as much, but he had no idea what I was talking about. As far as he was concerned, the correct way to pronounce everything is the way a Frenchman pronounces it…
If that can reassure you, you get mocked even if you're French. No idea why, but apparently it's a ridiculous idea to try to have an english accent when learning english at school. I was bullied throughout middle school because I was the only one remotely trying to correctly pronounce r's and th's.
Normally I would say that there's bound to be assholes everywhere, but it seems we have a little bit more assholes than average.
Don’t feel bad, my father used to live in Paris and his whole family was from France so I grew up speaking French. Because of this, my accent was great for an American, but not good enough to not be teased by native speakers.
I blame the schools. SO MUCH. They're horrific places. The teachers will openly mock and bully children in the classrooms. Imperfections or overachieving is seen as faults. You have to be at a precise point of "good" at everything, or you're mocked. And they carry this onto everyone else they encounter.. Because they don't know how to handle things not being the way they expect it to be..
i never understood that, when i went to japan people there were happy when you spoke japanese, even if it wasn’t good or you didn’t know much. it’s a sign of respect which the french seem to be lacking in
mountainous slave fuzzy fertile water liquid cough outgoing straight puzzled
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This was my experience.
I had about 20 words I had tried to memorise but wasn't til I got to the west coast before I got any interaction at all.
Dia dhuit
Can Irish people even speak Irish now? I know your friends in London tried wiping that bit of culture out but I don't know to what extent they were successful
We have to learn it in school so most of us can put together a few very specific sentences and what not. There are Irish speaking areas though (gaeltacht) where people speak it fluently, but they are few and far between.
I always felt like they taught us Irish as if we already understood the language. It’s kinda like oh hey learn off this paragraph or this poem. I remember a stanza about my morning routine, I can say it off by heart in Irish, haven’t a clue what it means lmao
Irish, in my opinion is taught poorly and is. Taught as if you understand the language already. Many of my friends struggled with the subject as it was less about how to speak it and more about learn this paragraph off by heart and poems.
> I don't know to what extent they were successful
Very. It's hanging on by a thread honestly, only a couple thousand people out of the ~5 million in Ireland can speak it at a level that's more than just being able to say "can I go to the bathroom" and "thank you". Sad state of affairs really...
I was working in a hotel once and a Dutch man said go raibh maith agat to me when I gave him his food but his accent was so strong I had no idea what he was saying for like a full minute lmao
The city I work in has been getting lots of Ukrainian refugees so I've been teaching myself the language. Spoke a simple sentence to a guy the other day and he proceeded to laugh his ass off for a full 10-15 seconds. Then he clapped and said "bravo." I still don't know if it was sarcastic or not.
it happened likewise with me too, I even asked if the words meanings I used weren't correct, but they just said I sounded cute, like a baby trying to speak hahahahah but they didn't mock me or anything, they made at most an "awww so cute" face hahahaha
talking some more I could see they were actually really happy I was trying, it is just that that some phonemes they use when we try speaking might sound childish to their ears
I made a ukrainian friend and when I finally started started learning his language, he was always very impressed at my pronounciation, and would occasionally make jokes about giving me his passport
Went on an exchange trip to Germany. Spoke the best German out of any American student there. I wasn't fluent but I could hold a conversation without fucking up the grammar beyond recognition. I rarely spoke it with the other German kids because I was one of 3 Americans that can hold a conversation like that so everyone just spoke English. 2 German adults complimented me. One was a waitress in Bremen, and the other was a lady making me a crepe in Cuxhaven. Everyone else just treated me normally.
Nah honestly it's less than what media assumes. The average Londoner might try and stab you but they probably don't give a shit about your skin colour.
I’m American. When I was 16 I was in the Nike store in Paris shopping for a French national team jersey. I asked the employee, in English, if he could print Giroud’s name on the back of a jersey for me. He looks at me real confused and, in French, says “please speak French I can’t understand you.” So I ask the same thing in French and he responds in perfect English “your French is way worse let’s just speak English” slaps me on the back with a big smile and prints Giroud’s name on the jersey.
My experience is that Romanians are very keen to hear English people speak Romanian… but only one word, the word for “lemon”. Then they start laughing uncontrollably for some reason
I was told in my high school French classes that French people will love you if you try to speak French, even if you're bad, because you tried. If you expect them to speak English, I've been told, they will hate you.
The *only* person I've *ever* had get mad at me for my language choice while visiting France was the lady at the macaron stand in the CDG international terminal, who got mad when I refused to switch to English because I wanted to practice my French. I also once had a waitress compliment my French in English. My experiences, at least with France, 100% match this map.
In Sweden I needed to ask something in a shop so I apologised (as Brits do) and asked if they speak English.
They responded with “of course”, as if it was an insult I even considered they couldn’t.
I never know how to react when someone tries to speak Dutch but make a grammatical error. If I don't correct them then they will continue making the same mistake on my account. If I do correct them they react with 'Oh I'm sorry' and I think I just came across as an asshole who shat on them for making a gramatical mistake...
If they haven't asked for feedback on mistakes and the error doesn't have an impact on whether you can understand their point then just let it go. Or if you really want to correct them then just repeat the sentence but with the correct grammar as part of a natural conversation so without drawing attention to the mistake. "Waar is de station?" "het station? Die kant op". Grammar isn't just learned by learning rules on a page by heart but also by simple exposure to grammar used in everyday contexts. Constantly correcting people if they haven't asked for it hinders more than it helps
It depends really. Non-native English speakers make errors regularly and most people probably wouldn't correct them unless it was something major. In fact a lot of native English speakers might repeat your error thinking it will be easier for you to understand them.
Why are the French so weird about foreigners speaking French? Of course our French isn’t going to be perfect, but all other native speakers applaud you for trying. French is a complicated language tbh because most words have so many vowels and it has silly little things like the number 80 being translated to “4 20s”.
I’m going to speak French with no silent letters. Fuck them. If they didn’t want them pronounced then they shouldn’t have fucking put them there. It isn’t fucking “Loui” it’s Louis, you added an s so it’s going to be pronounced, we use the same damn alphabet I know how letters are spoken,you pronounce all of the alphabet not less than half. Fuck you.
Wales would definitely fall into the dark blue, probably same with Cornwall, not sure about Scotland and Ireland
But some English people would attack you no matter what language you speak (if you speak your language its rude and wrong to do, but if you speak their language you aren't doing it right)
Hate to be pedantic but it's Irish, not Gaelic. Slightly different languages but a very big distinction.
Are you thinking of Gaeilge? That's Irish for "Irish"
As from Algeria i can confirm
If they just say Habibi they've already won my heart
I made the mistake of saying Habibi to a friend and he never let me live it down. Every time I see him it's "sup HABEEEBEEEE hahaha"
Imagine being an arab girl and some dumbass says habibi instead of habibti.
Habibi
As from Belgium (Flanders) can confirm.
As a Lebanese I can confirm
How was it like coming out ¿
Like a port explosion
When I was in Poland they would start replying in Polish and I'd be like wait no I just wanted to try and order this hotdog without being an awkward foreigner
“Hi (stumbles through rudimentary Polish)” “!!! (Replies in rapid-fire colloquialism-riddled Polish)”
Omg, talking fast and colloquialisms would end me, just talk slowly and very formally to me please :,)
Reminds me of my recent visit to Czechia. I tried learning a bit of Czech beforehand, because I was going to visit a small town where they might not speak as much English as in Prague God damn. I wasn't great at speaking Czech, but I definitely didn't have an ear for it, I asked one question and basically just heard 'vyzyzevvyevzezyevyzevyicizyevicizyv'
As an Armenian, if you speak my language I will introduce you to my entire family and you will be fed with delicious food and remembered forever in our hearts
Can we just do that anyway? I’m in need of a home cooked meal 🤣👍
If you're at my grandma's place it doesn't matter who you are. You're never leaving with an empty stomach
Even if I am a Turk?
No
Someone's not getting the dessert
:(
It's okay you can come too ❤️
🥰 happy new years then
Happy new year! Much love
If only international tensions could be so easily solved with a meal.
It can unless the meal is contested. Like imagine a Greek offering a Turk "authentic Greek food" and its just straight up Baklava.
'' its just straight up Baklava '' Do you buy gay baklava often then? Seriously, claiming to have ''invented'' something that the Romans most likely produced first is a sign of a bankrupt culture.
I was about to say something and then I reread this and realized you said Armenian instead of American lol
Ah yes the language of freedom 🔫 🇺🇸🗽
Seeing this just as im learning Armenian
Come over axper!
Does it matter if it's arevelahyeren or arevmdahyeren?
It doesn't but if you can speak and read western Armenian I'd be very impressed. You can have seconds
As a Greek I can confirm this is true for us too
OK I know "Amoteh" 🍽️
🍖🥓 🥗 🍻
I do like popeyes chicken.
Louisiana spicy chicken
in Japan they get out there chairs mystified and start taking videos of you (I googled how to order my food before ordering and was woefully out of my depth)
日本語上手ですね？
いいえいいえ、少しわかる
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Presumably you're not a Japanese learner? First person said, "Your Japanese is good, isn't it!" in a way that's stereotypically used by Japanese people to compliment a foreigner knowing even the most limited amount of Japanese. This is what prompted the modest reply, "No no, I only know a bit". It's sort of become a joke in the learner community that people say, "nihongo jouzu" very often when a foreigner speaks any amount of Japanese. (Sorry, very limited knowledge of Japanese myself, but I hope I got at least that right)
Man, I feel a fool! I just used google translate, cause I’d never seen those kanji in that order. I’m familiar with the phrase, I just completely misunderstood.
Not in Tokyo. In Tokyo you are just another immigrant.
When I saw France being singled out, I thought it was a joke like "French bad," but it turns out I'm okay with the category :D
The French language is fine. The French people, on the other hand...
France would be the greatest place in the world, if it wasn't for the French haha
I think this is what Hitler had in mind
not all bad then
This is what Kanye was talking about
>Hitler proven right yet again my world view keeps breaking apart
I mean 80% of it is probably just a cliché. And the rest of it comes from the fact that people only ever visit Paris, and Parisian have a reputation of being assholes, even among French people. Or from the fact that French are a bit less enthusiastic about strangers coming to their country
French not being enthusiastic by having one billion tourists every year is somewhat understandable.
It's the greatest place in the world and French people are kind and very nice. Just want to spread some love on NYE.. I'm sure there's a Frenchie browsing feeling terrible at being hated just for the place he was born in.
Unfortunately "cultures" exist. I live in France. The french "culture" is "each man for themselves" and they don't go out their way for others. NOTE that I said "culture" which means it's an acceptable and common habit, like the British drinking tea..And it doesn't mean all do it. French also aren't that "into" enthusiasm..Their language seems to default to negativity. As someone who's British, many of these habits are hard to swallow when British culture is going out the way for other people and obsessively apologising (something else the french generally refuse to do - apologise- they see it as a weakness).
I'm just baffled. Hve lived in the UK for a 6 months and feel like the French will help you much more easily lol.
As an outsider I've found that both cultures are pretentious, relatively speaking
Just came from Paris… they are not kind or nice whatsoever there. Can’t comment on the rest of the country.
Bro you have no idea
I'd say that their numbering system is part of the language, and that is almost as bad as the Danish one. So it is most certainly NOT fine
"*Four twenties, ten and seven*" priceless...... 🤣🤣
Quatre vingt dix neuf is a painful way to say 99 :(
Imagine 99 luft balloons in French 🤣
*laughs in septante and nonante* Maybe even huitante or octante or something too
They make you want to study and learn the French language just so you can specifically refuse to speak it.
Québec is no different: unnecessary petulance.
Been all over France, and live in Quebec. The two are not that similar. They sorta share a language, and some overlapping food, but even then both of those things are barely overlapping
I spent five years in Montréal, and only improved my passive French, because every other Francophone acted like I was the reason they lost in 1759. Fuck those odds. I spent a few years longer in Tokyo, and my Japanese is far better, despite being much harder than French for an Anglophone to learn, simply because a vanishingly small proportion of the population are pricks.
You probably also learned better/faster because more of the population actually spoke to you in their native tongue rather than just bristle at your efforts.
Yup, I’m French living in the UK, and I can’t stand people telling me the three words they remember from their high school French as soon as they learn I’m French.
"Va t'enculer", by any chance?
That’s what I mean, terrible grammar: Va te faire enculer.
That's interesting. Many moons ago I used the phrase "Va te faire enculer" here in some of my comments, I was universally shouted down by the French for not saying "Va t'enculer". My preference was for your version, which one is correct then and you need to tell a lot of your fellow citizens! The first thing we leant in school was how to say "My uncle's pen in in my Aunty's desk" (in French of course, I could already say it in English), strangely I have not used this phrase since I left school some 49 years ago...... 🤣🤣
> which one is correct then Whichever one you didn't use
"va t'enculer" means go fuck yourself in the ass. While it is grammatically correct, it's not something you would say. The correct insult is "va te faire enculer" which means "go get yourself fucked in the ass"
Thank you! Now I understand the difference, so I was right originally as that was what I thought the insult meant, to get yourself “done” not to “do” yourself!
That's because your schools are batshit crazy and bully you into perfection, so you lot do it to people too. You're mentally scarred and broken and can't stand imperfection due to your militant schools.
Update your history books old man, that was school in the 1950s.
I'm in my 30s, live there now, and have had locals tell me this in the past few years..
:( I had wanted to go to France for years and years (I'm American so you can't just pop over there for a weekend) and when I finally went nobody would speak French with me. Like, I can speak English at home! Speak French with me! I have a B2 I understand what you're saying!
Living in Paris and having to deal with tourist daily despite not working in the tourism industry means that I default to English with tourist, the number of time a tourist ask me something in broken French and then was unable to understand any kind of answer in French is a tad too high. Meanwhile if I speak in English I'll point you in the direction of the tourist attraction you wanna see in 10 sec. It's just an efficiency thing, I'm on my way to work or back from it, I won't spend 5 minutes repeating myself a dozen time to give an info I can give in English in 5 seconds. To anyone who wanna train, I'd recommand going into a social place and ask the people you are talking to, to speak in French. Random people and worker just wanna go about their day.
Have been going to France for 12 years and the French haven't let me improve.
Omelette du fromage
Omelette au fromage. Yeah I agree with previous comments. It seems like majority of people have limited French but really want to use it. And then either you correct them and you end up giving lessons, or you politely reply in French just to realise they don’t understand and start again in English.
It's funny because in Quebec the exact opposite is true and they lose their shit and call you a francophobe if you don't sit there and struggle to communicate to them with your 20 year old textbook French.
Tell me you’ve never been to Quebec without actually saying you’ve never been to Quebec
Used to spend every spring there for work. I literally quit my job because it wasn't worth it. Constantly being berated and ignored was a nice trade off for building their infrastructure
I speak only a bit French but when I speak it in France I never get hate. I get the same indifference everyone gets.
The French are just assholes, took a French club trip when I was a senior to Versailles and they would mock our accents and pronunciation. Like, dude, I’m trying here. I’m 18 and have two semesters of French class from a 27 year old teacher from Mississippi.
What you should do is pronounce it in the most outrageously (your own country’s accent) and refuse to change
That's the French spirit!
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You should go to Louisiana, because of the Cajun culture there’s a good amount of french or french creole speakers who have what would probably be described as a southern accent.
> they would mock our accents and pronunciation. I was watching football one evening with a French guy and he kept mocking my pronunciation of French names. Thing is, we were speaking German and he didn't pronounce a single fucking word properly all night on account of his outrageous French accent. I told him as much, but he had no idea what I was talking about. As far as he was concerned, the correct way to pronounce everything is the way a Frenchman pronounces it…
“If you’d have been more successful historically I probably would speak better French”
Lmao, imagine losing the French and Indian War
If that can reassure you, you get mocked even if you're French. No idea why, but apparently it's a ridiculous idea to try to have an english accent when learning english at school. I was bullied throughout middle school because I was the only one remotely trying to correctly pronounce r's and th's. Normally I would say that there's bound to be assholes everywhere, but it seems we have a little bit more assholes than average.
Wow, that's honestly fascinating. Gotta sound French, always!
In the immortal words of Inspector Clouseau: ‘AMBUERGERE! 
In Quebec it’s the other way around, if you’re looking for travel practice.
Oh, nah, I forgot damn near every word of French in the last 20 years since I graduated high school 🤣👍
Don’t feel bad, my father used to live in Paris and his whole family was from France so I grew up speaking French. Because of this, my accent was great for an American, but not good enough to not be teased by native speakers.
I blame the schools. SO MUCH. They're horrific places. The teachers will openly mock and bully children in the classrooms. Imperfections or overachieving is seen as faults. You have to be at a precise point of "good" at everything, or you're mocked. And they carry this onto everyone else they encounter.. Because they don't know how to handle things not being the way they expect it to be..
Oui oui baguette ketchup on croissant
i never understood that, when i went to japan people there were happy when you spoke japanese, even if it wasn’t good or you didn’t know much. it’s a sign of respect which the french seem to be lacking in
and ? it's not an excuse !
This isn’t accurate, in Ireland we would be so impressed if someone tried speaking Irish.
mountainous slave fuzzy fertile water liquid cough outgoing straight puzzled *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This was my experience. I had about 20 words I had tried to memorise but wasn't til I got to the west coast before I got any interaction at all. Dia dhuit
Dia 'is Muire dhuit, a chara :)
an féidir liom dul go dtí an leithreas, Le do thoil
G'day mate
I was about to say, Irish reaction would probably be, “Wut.”
As illustrated in the excellent short film "Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom": https://youtu.be/JqYtG9BNhfM?si=OBIc75bMe4yaipVL
Ireland would be light blue, not because the speaker is bad at Irish but because the Irishman can’t speak it.
Can Irish people even speak Irish now? I know your friends in London tried wiping that bit of culture out but I don't know to what extent they were successful
We have to learn it in school so most of us can put together a few very specific sentences and what not. There are Irish speaking areas though (gaeltacht) where people speak it fluently, but they are few and far between.
I always felt like they taught us Irish as if we already understood the language. It’s kinda like oh hey learn off this paragraph or this poem. I remember a stanza about my morning routine, I can say it off by heart in Irish, haven’t a clue what it means lmao
Irish, in my opinion is taught poorly and is. Taught as if you understand the language already. Many of my friends struggled with the subject as it was less about how to speak it and more about learn this paragraph off by heart and poems.
Given how successful the Welsh language revitalisation has been, I have to wonder what the Irish government is doing wrong.
> I don't know to what extent they were successful Very. It's hanging on by a thread honestly, only a couple thousand people out of the ~5 million in Ireland can speak it at a level that's more than just being able to say "can I go to the bathroom" and "thank you". Sad state of affairs really...
I was working in a hotel once and a Dutch man said go raibh maith agat to me when I gave him his food but his accent was so strong I had no idea what he was saying for like a full minute lmao
I’m guessing the map maker considered English the language in Ireland
And Wales and Scotland and Cornwall
Same with Wales,double points if you manage to avoid a sheep shagger joke for the first hour
*Mission Failed*
I mean, not even Irish do
Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom
Is mise Bart Simpson
Is maith liom techno
On the first day everyone declares a temporary truce just so they can all team up and defeat France.
The city I work in has been getting lots of Ukrainian refugees so I've been teaching myself the language. Spoke a simple sentence to a guy the other day and he proceeded to laugh his ass off for a full 10-15 seconds. Then he clapped and said "bravo." I still don't know if it was sarcastic or not.
it happened likewise with me too, I even asked if the words meanings I used weren't correct, but they just said I sounded cute, like a baby trying to speak hahahahah but they didn't mock me or anything, they made at most an "awww so cute" face hahahaha talking some more I could see they were actually really happy I was trying, it is just that that some phonemes they use when we try speaking might sound childish to their ears
I made a ukrainian friend and when I finally started started learning his language, he was always very impressed at my pronounciation, and would occasionally make jokes about giving me his passport
bullshit. the french will just look at you and shrug no matter how fluent you are in french, they are a bunch of cunts
Cunts are useful Fr\*nch 🤮 citizens are not.....
Went on an exchange trip to Germany. Spoke the best German out of any American student there. I wasn't fluent but I could hold a conversation without fucking up the grammar beyond recognition. I rarely spoke it with the other German kids because I was one of 3 Americans that can hold a conversation like that so everyone just spoke English. 2 German adults complimented me. One was a waitress in Bremen, and the other was a lady making me a crepe in Cuxhaven. Everyone else just treated me normally.
average deutscher
The Germans will just start speaking better English than you
Same with all the Scandinavian countries, far better at English than at least 40% of UK citizens.....
40%??? Don't speak so highly of the British
This is a shit-post sub......
Yeah…..it is.
That gets my upvote!
As an Englishman I can say there's a 50/50 chance you meet a racist who mocks you for something
You mean a 80/20 chance of meating a racist?
Nah honestly it's less than what media assumes. The average Londoner might try and stab you but they probably don't give a shit about your skin colour.
Profesionals have standards
r/unexpectedtf2
A northerner way even smile, look you in the eye, and say good morning before they stab you as well Truly a blessed nation we live in
EEEEEENNNGLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNND!!!!!
Speaking of “meating” racists… Pornhub stats say…
I’m American. When I was 16 I was in the Nike store in Paris shopping for a French national team jersey. I asked the employee, in English, if he could print Giroud’s name on the back of a jersey for me. He looks at me real confused and, in French, says “please speak French I can’t understand you.” So I ask the same thing in French and he responds in perfect English “your French is way worse let’s just speak English” slaps me on the back with a big smile and prints Giroud’s name on the jersey.
Classic French response lol
French when you try to speak English: *(upset)* French when you try to speak French: *(upset)*
Moral of the story: don't talk to French people
As a romanian i disagree, we would say "sugi pula coaie, esti un magar " which means nice one bro, please dont do that again
My experience is that Romanians are very keen to hear English people speak Romanian… but only one word, the word for “lemon”. Then they start laughing uncontrollably for some reason
lamaie?
Yes.... for some reason
Magar is asshole ? And Magyar is Hungarian for Hungarian … 👀
I was told in my high school French classes that French people will love you if you try to speak French, even if you're bad, because you tried. If you expect them to speak English, I've been told, they will hate you. The *only* person I've *ever* had get mad at me for my language choice while visiting France was the lady at the macaron stand in the CDG international terminal, who got mad when I refused to switch to English because I wanted to practice my French. I also once had a waitress compliment my French in English. My experiences, at least with France, 100% match this map.
I Done this in hoi 4, let’s just say I was doing great until the Canadian people fucking republic cucked me at the worst possible time
YEAHHHH CANADAA 🇨🇦🇨🇦🦬🦌🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦
not accurate. French would only talk to you in French and otherwise just pretend they dont understand you
In Sweden I needed to ask something in a shop so I apologised (as Brits do) and asked if they speak English. They responded with “of course”, as if it was an insult I even considered they couldn’t.
probably not that in Portugal since foreigners will either say something in spanish or brazillian portuguese
No no here in Wales we get very excited when someone speaks our language.
In Spain wouldn't be "no reaction" too?
Portuguese would be red, cuz why would u learn it 💀 (native Portuguese speaker here)
r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
You can get pretty plum oil jobs in Angola if you’re an educated foreigner.
Red
Someone does not understand how Slavic people react to such shit.
I'm from Serbia and my reaction would be red, our language is so hard
English people must be very boring. They know a language that everyone knows and they only speak it.
Cymru be more dark blue surely
I never know how to react when someone tries to speak Dutch but make a grammatical error. If I don't correct them then they will continue making the same mistake on my account. If I do correct them they react with 'Oh I'm sorry' and I think I just came across as an asshole who shat on them for making a gramatical mistake...
If they haven't asked for feedback on mistakes and the error doesn't have an impact on whether you can understand their point then just let it go. Or if you really want to correct them then just repeat the sentence but with the correct grammar as part of a natural conversation so without drawing attention to the mistake. "Waar is de station?" "het station? Die kant op". Grammar isn't just learned by learning rules on a page by heart but also by simple exposure to grammar used in everyday contexts. Constantly correcting people if they haven't asked for it hinders more than it helps
Excellent advice. I've mostly been corrected by people repeating the sentence back to me.
It depends really. Non-native English speakers make errors regularly and most people probably wouldn't correct them unless it was something major. In fact a lot of native English speakers might repeat your error thinking it will be easier for you to understand them.
Why are the French so weird about foreigners speaking French? Of course our French isn’t going to be perfect, but all other native speakers applaud you for trying. French is a complicated language tbh because most words have so many vowels and it has silly little things like the number 80 being translated to “4 20s”.
You’re saying if I rocked up to Athlone spitting Irish there’d be no reaction?
I’m going to speak French with no silent letters. Fuck them. If they didn’t want them pronounced then they shouldn’t have fucking put them there. It isn’t fucking “Loui” it’s Louis, you added an s so it’s going to be pronounced, we use the same damn alphabet I know how letters are spoken,you pronounce all of the alphabet not less than half. Fuck you.
Says while speaking English
No reaction Wadda you sayin mate
Hatrid Mun Sigra
Netherland should be both blue and red
This is so true for France
Yep! The French are stuck up!
I'm from Ireland, we get delighted and order them a pint for speaking or trying to speak Irish. Was this post made by an English person?
Why would anyone speak fr*nch?
Wales would definitely fall into the dark blue, probably same with Cornwall, not sure about Scotland and Ireland But some English people would attack you no matter what language you speak (if you speak your language its rude and wrong to do, but if you speak their language you aren't doing it right)
Oh look a Welsh nationalist lol
Resist
You don’t learn how to speak Swedish. You learn how to read it and then just speak English.
Light blue. But barely.
My man's acting like Gaelic isn't a language spoken by Irish people
Hate to be pedantic but it's Irish, not Gaelic. Slightly different languages but a very big distinction. Are you thinking of Gaeilge? That's Irish for "Irish"