Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by seszett 619 days ago
And in French...

Tu parles français

Tu parles français ?

Parles-tu français ?

Est-ce-que tu parles français ?

I guess it's the best of both worlds.

The French like to hear foreigners speak French though, they're just terrible at understanding accents they don't hear often and terrible at adjusting their speech so the other person understands them. And too self conscious about their English accent to speak English.

2 comments

I only heard bad things about the French and their language, but I never met a unfriendly french person.

Don't know where this prejudice comes from.

I'm assuming you've been to France and particularly Paris? I wouldn't say every French person is unfriendly, but my anecdotal evidence seems to point to there being a higher rate of unfriendly people (towards tourists perhaps) in France (mostly in the south of France + Paris twice), compared to other places I've visited as a tourist.
You would tutoyer a stranger?
It depends on the context and the age of the stranger. If it's at work (some random sysadmin or dev at a client, say) yes I would, in the street I wouldn't. In Québec it's more common to tutoyer strangers than in Europe, too.