Quote:
Originally Posted by DrSmith
There is that stereotype that French people refuse to speak English. Maybe there's some truth in that.
<a href="http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080717062214AAJe8Pg" target="_blank"><b>Why do most french people refuse to speak english?</b></a> Quote:
I'm French so I can answer. A lot of French people feel ashamed to speak English, because even if they can understand, they don't feel comfortable enough to speak. Plus, a funny thing is that even if most foreigners like the French accent, our accent is considered as a bit ridiculous to ourselves. I can speak enough English to answer a question in the street and I still find my self ackward when I speak English, it makes me feel a little embarassed. If you go to Germany, Sweden, Norway ..., most people speak very well English because their language look like English. In Spain, Italy or France, we don't speak very well most of the time and always assume that no one could understand our English. |
I'm from England, and the same is true the other way around. English speakers generally feel like they're mispronouncing words or afraid of making faux pas', simply because the sounds are massively different, despite English being heavily influenced by romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Latin). This is why a lot of people at my old secondary school (A specialist language school) found it much easier to learn German, as the sounds are more phonetically similar (on words that aren't exactly the same in both languages that is).
Try getting a random English speaker to try and understand the last few words of the second verse of Fifty-Sixty (Popcorn et Hula-Hoop). I doubt many would work it out, as the pronunciation is so different.
Also when you aren't fluent in a language, the speakers always seem to talk ridiculously fast. I guess more French people know English than the other way around, simply because a larger amount of people speak english, so knowing at least a few basic phrases could be helpful.
As my dad put it "I only remember the most important question in french: Parlez-vous Anglais?" Saying that, I'm still trying to get fluent in French.