I had a similar experience a few years back. Even though they tell you to please stop, they would always be very happy and helpful after you attempted to speak French. It’s like you gotta pay the toll or something.

While Irish is definitely a language that is spoken by many people in Ireland, it's not quite "main language of the country" level yet so I can see why maps don't count it

Gaelige deserves to thrive.

Me and my "French taco" with ham, harissa, frites, kebab, and a hamburger patty can attest to that.

Sorry weird fat dude from Calais, je suis réveillé a quatre heures because my kid couldn't sleep and my brains are merde de chien.

I’ve found it’s really more of a fact that most French people hate tourists and honestly mad respect for that. The only places I’ve seen French people be rude to anyone trying to speak French are places like the riviera and Paris. Most French people are lovely and patient with me butchering their language.

Those kind of maps are based of stereotypes and memes rather than actual surveys. So always take it with a grain of salt.

We Germans love when foreigner speak German even the pronunciation or grammar isn't perfect. To be honest most Germans can't speak perfect German either.

I used to work in France a lot. Mainly older people (I delivered stair lifts). It's surprising how few speak even a single word English. Not just the old folks, but also the stores who sold these items. Many times there was only a single person who spoke English in a company.

Never had a negative reaction to my butchering of their language though. Always very patient and understanding

Same here - positive reactions, especially in France. The one place my schoolgirl French met with hostility was in a youth hostel in rural Quebec. And why was that? "We thought you were from Ontario."

Personally, I've made a conscious decision to never learn French, purely because of how much of a bitch my French (from France, thick accent) teacher was in middle school. She made this girl, that she knew was really dyslexic, read in front of the class to humiliate her. Pretty sure she got fired.

Hardly a world traveller, but Paris is the only place where my butchering of a local language was more effective in communication than their butchering of English.

I LOVED the experience of the tables being turned, where I was the one who sounded slow and uncertain in another language.

Completely masked the reality that I sound slow and uncertain in my native tongue. But THEY'LL never know 😉😉

Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?

That’s my baseline for speaking French. 99% of the time the French are gracious and switch.

The few times someone has responded “non” we use pidgin franglish or pantomime whatever we need to discuss. Haven’t had someone be a jerk about French or English in France for almost 20 years.

their language is money and if you don't speak it you're not there cuz you can't afford to be

Ahhhh but if you speak butchered Catalan in Catalonia they are so grateful.

Tholo debeth thethearte hathta que inithian a penthar que a) ethtath burlando de eyyos , b) creen que teneth una thetheo o c) creen que hablath como Pato Lukath.

Ah speak Joual. Not French, or Hanglish.

No, we do actually appreciate when people speak good German, we just know it's an absolute pain and want to be nice.

Nein. Learn German so you can understand German memes.

The biggest German meme community is: [email protected]

Lived in Germany for over a year.

Id say over 90% of conversations I started in German turned to English. They were all excited to use the english they had learned in school "cause no one wants to speak english but I want to practice my skills"

Like, you all want to speak english, just switch over. Even the kids were more excited to speak english cause everything uses "the"

Der die das is too much to use for even the native speakers haha

Nah keep going. Most germans are just excited at the opportunity to speak english, but if you tell them that you would like to practice german, most will understand.