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by scrollaway
4038 days ago
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I'm French. I've lived in France, the UK, Sweden and a bunch of other places in Europe. English is dead easy to learn; people just don't care, it's in the culture. Nobody can speak English back in france. It's pathetic. Often when I go through Paris' airports, I speak english just to see how badly people still speak it, and just how much effort they'll go through to still speak french despite having someone who has shown no sign of speaking your language in front of you. For some, it's pride. For most, it's lack of education. For all, it's a sad, sad situation. And the degree to which it happens is absolutely unique to France - I have never seen such dislike of foreign languages in any other country - and my full time job is in localization engineering. I've been in Stockholm for about a year now and I've had trouble finding swedes that do not speak English. The turkish immigrant at the local pizzeria? Even his English is better than a majority of french people's skills in any foreign language, and he's the worst speaker I've met so far here. On top of fluent Swedish and Turkish. Greece? Spain? Romania? Even Germany! Most people speak English, and often a third language. This is unique to France and it's not something we can be proud of. |
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Maybe it was for you, but its not equally easy to learn for let say Swedes, French and Japanese. I noticed latin languages speakers have a harder time. English accent is very difficult to get right for French.
> Nobody can speak English back in france. It's pathetic.
It's obviously not true. Most people that went through high school at least know the basics. Usually, they lack practice and feel shy and self conscious, but I believe they can sustain a simple conversation if needed.
And all "grandes écoles" students speak at least decent English (I know for teaching in one).
> This is unique to France
Have you been to Italy? my experience is that they're not better than the French as far as english speaking is concerned. Same in Spain.
But seriously, what about Japan? Peru? Brazil? China? There are tons of countries where most people don't speak english at all.
> it's not something we can be proud of.
A lot of time is devoted to teaching English in France. Starting at primary school now. But learning a foreign language is notoriously hard. And things are getting better.
Maybe, what is unique to the French is to think they are so unique at everything :)