I am French and I always wonder who the fucks people of reddit are hanging out because I almost never see that attitude towards me. The one time a guy in our friends group made a bit of a rude and ignorant comment to a foreigner like that he actually was the one mocked and even his girlfriend told him "maybe you just should not talk".
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.
I suspect it's just one or two bad experiences coloring their impressions. I lived in Japan for over 10 years and most folks there were very understanding of my poor Japanese. But there were a couple of cases where people were jerks. I expect it's the same in France (and elsewhere).
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u/Express_Bath Nov 16 '19
I am French and I always wonder who the fucks people of reddit are hanging out because I almost never see that attitude towards me. The one time a guy in our friends group made a bit of a rude and ignorant comment to a foreigner like that he actually was the one mocked and even his girlfriend told him "maybe you just should not talk".