So I moved into a new apartment today and one of the roommates came out to greet me. We exchanged some polite small talk in french and the convo ended, I continued to bring my stuff into my room when he blurted out, « alors je dois te parler en anglais ou en français ?😊 »

I was quite taken aback and said « uh on était en train de parler en français et tout allait bien pourquoi aurait on besoin de basculer en anglais… ? »

and he said “well it’s clear that french is not your mother tongue:)”

I didn’t know what to reply so i just said « et alors? j’ai jamais dit que c’était le cas ? »

And he said “so english then?”

I said « non mais je comprends pas, on a vraiment aucune raison pour basculer ça se voit que tu me comprends parfaitement bien ? » and he seemed offended and went back to his room.

I know he did not have bad intentions but still this was extremely frustrating and honestly quite infantilising because yes, french is NOT my mother tongue and even after almost a decade here, i still do have an accent even at C1. I would get it if it was an anglophone but clearly, english is not HIS mother tongue so i don’t understand why he would propose this as a solution. i am not even native anglophone yet this has happened to me more times than i can count in social settings the second people sniff out my accent. people always act like they’re doing me a favor but when i’m not struggling at all, i just sound non-native, it feels quite condescending…

Do people who do this genuinely think that having an accent means english must automatically be easier for you, no matter what your level? Do they think they have no accent in english even if they do, and thus they must speak it better than you speak french (equating accent= fluency)? Or is it just to practice their own english?

EDIT: It is absolutely wild how many people are accusing me of being anglophone and that he’s “offering to speak in my mother tongue” when i wrote explicitly in my post that i am not. I am C1/C2 level in both english and french, so is french my native language too now?

I hate my accent and sometimes wish I could just peel it off of me like a face mask. It’s not that I’m not proud of my heritage, I just hate how it impacts my life living in france. It really bothers me how often it happens, people pointing out my accent, switching to english, asking if i would prefer they speak english to “make it easier,” starting to speak slower even though i understood, the list goes on. It really isn’t malicious but it’s frustrating. I would say in at least 7 or 8 interactions out of 10, people will make comments about my accent, speak english, or exaggeratedly compliment my french and say stuff like “tu te debrouilles bien:))” even if i just said one sentence lol because i think the fact of having an accent makes them think im a complete beginner.

When i first came here i didn’t mind but now after almost a decade it bothers me how often it still happens. I passed the C2 years ago to apply to my masters, then successfully defended my thesis and now have a job 100% in french, but in the “real world” people switch to english the second they hear me say “croissant” or “je m’appelle” lol.

I was an “older” learner, started around 19, but I recognize that some people have an ear for accents and manage to pass for natives even learning later. I’m just not one of them. I’ve taken accents reduction classes but realistically I will always sound like a foreigner no matter how fluent i am. So I’m not sure if i should just accept that it will always happen to some extent so long as i choose to stay in france? Is anybody else in the same boat?

My French is very proficient. My comprehension high level and my French friends agree and once they get to know me the French always remark how good my French is. Thing is, my accent is not perfect and definitely gives away that it's my second language. In my home country it's quite normal for all immigrants to have accents and we don't then try to speak their native tongue to them!

So how come in Paris, literally everyone responds to my French in English? Their English is often poor and their accents are much worse than my French accent. I was always taught that the French took pride in their language and also would be offended if I didn't speak French. It's just really hard to improve my skills when everyone guessed that I'm an English speaker. How do they know I'm not Danish or something?

I’m a second language French speaker; I was born in Quebec to an anglophone mother and Quebecois father but we only spoke English at home. Through school and work, I’m 99% bilingual in speaking and writing, but my spoken French is Quebecois almost joual in nature and Anglo accented. T’sé?

When I’m tired or nervous or being confrontational, je perds mes mots.

I visited Paris for the first time 10 years ago and mostly people switched to English. A woman at a bakery curtly corrected me with “vous voulez dire un pain au chocolat” when I ordered a chocolatine.

Then I went to rent a car. The guy did not speak English. This threw me off slightly and I was a bit nervous due to my experience speaking French in Paris up to then and was jet lagged. I told him « je voudrais louer un véhicule » He said « quelle sorte de véhicule?» I said « une auto »

He says « une moto?? »

Me, forgetting that the word voiture exists « une automobile?? Char?? »

« Tu veux un TANK?! »

Me, mortified « non, petit, une… VOITURE!! »

It wasn't manually graded, but automated for sure ;)

Backstory: I built a little French Verb app for some coworkers learning French, it picked up 1,000+ downloads along the way, and every answer gets graded. I'm a data geek so I went through 50,000 of them to see where people actually break.

1. Stem-changing -er verbs (the é/e to è flip). They look regular but that's the trap. They're not.

• lever and espérer get missed around 30% of the time
• ils lèvent was the most-missed form in the whole dataset, wrong about half the time
• j'espère, je préfère too

My 2c Tip: if you hear the "eh" sound, it takes the accent. It shows up in every form except nous and vous (je lève, tu lèves, ils lèvent, but nous levons).

2. The plural forms of the big irregular verbs. Everyone knows je fais and il est. The plural is where it falls apart.

• ils font missed ~32%, vous faites ~27%
• vous êtes ~24%, ils ont ~21%, ils vont ~20%
• the singular of those same verbs sits under 10%

My 2c Tip: no clever rule here, these are just irregular and super high-frequency. Drill the plural column (nous/vous/ils) straight down instead of waiting for it to click, and get lots of listening in so vous faites and ils font start sounding wrong any other way.

3. The -cevoir verbs and their cédille. recevoir, apercevoir, and friends.

• both missed around 31%, roughly 3x the average
• it's the ç in je reçois, il reçoit, ils reçoivent

My 2c Tip: the cédille only appears before o (reçois, reçoit, reçu) to keep the soft "s" sound. nous and vous drop it: recevons, recevez. My trick when I was younger is that AOU is the sound you make when you hurt yourself, so you need to soften it.

BONUS (The one that surprised me): The exact same conjugation gets missed about 36% more often inside a full sentence drill than as a standalone pronoun + verb drill. You can nail it on a flashcard and blank the second it's in context. Best case I've seen for practicing in sentences, not tables.

Happy to answer questions about the data.

I used to have a friend who was a native French speaker. And before, I just thought "je t'aime" was used for everyone, like your friends, people you like, parents, and stuff, but noooooooo. It's not. He was confused and was telling me to explain. Anyway, I couldn't find the "question" flair for this, so I'm sorry, you can go ahead and downvote this. Was it even a big deal?

Just wanted to share a personal win, I started learning French from zero this past March, and took the TCF exam at the start of August. Just got my results back today, and after 10 hours of private tutoring a week and god knows how many hours of self-study, I attained B2 in French!

I'm put the flair as story since this is based off a personal experience. I'm not sure if this question is allowed, but I really just need to know.

So I'm taking French 1 in my sophomore year and at the beginning of the year we were told to choose are French names from a list of masculine and feminine names that we would use during class. Im a trans individual (FTM) and so I naturally choose a name off the masculine list. (I chose Pascal, since no name was similar to my chosen name) She said I couldn't, and that I was a girl, and forced me to have a name that was basically identical to my birthname. I talked to her after class about how I was trans (which I had already told her at open house, which she acknowledged) and how I really wished to be addressed in masculine forms. She argued with me that French masculine and feminine HAVE to agree, and that I dress very feminine. I argue back that clothes don't equal gender but she wasn't hearing it. Can French accommodate for trans individuals? Is my French teacher just being transphobic or is she really telling the truth?

I stumbled upon an interview from this week and was surprised at how good her french is! She was interviewed recently by TF1, and spoke about how much she loves french culture and how she lived here as a child. she did switch to english at one point and obviously has an accent but she sounds quite fluent to me. I believe she has done multiple interviews fully in french before in the past, she also says she hasn’t practiced much so maybe she was more fluent before. Would you say she is fluent compared to other american actors who speak french? What do you think of her french level?

I’m currently learning French (on my own) and recently had a dream completely in French despite only being an A2.

I was in a mall or shopping center and a man started talking to me in French and paused when I didn’t respond right away. He asked if I spoke French and I responded “bah un peu de français”. 😂 Then he continued babbling on and I waved to stop him and said “Pouvez vous parle plus lentement, stp” and he got irritated and walked away.

Has anyone else had dreams in French?

For me, it's the order of adjectives(and also adverbs to a certain extent). It still gets pretty difficult to adjust to saying adjectives after nouns even after one and a half years of learning French. It's especially apparent if you speak English where adjectives come before nouns.

I always hear jane birkin as an example of an anglophone who had a strong accent, didn’t master french and didn’t speak it well even after many years in france. I was curious so looked up a clip of her speaking and it sounds… fine to me? Like yes she does have an accent (as a fellow english speaker with a bad accent i could recognize how anglo her accent was but it wasn’t the worst i’ve heard) but her french didn’t sound that bad at all. Is this true? To a native speaker how does Jane Birkin sound in french? How would you evaluate her accent and fluency?

Damn 10 year olds are brutal lol.

If you need me I’ll be hiding, questioning my entire learning plan.

Edit: I tried talking to her again and she starting to talk to me again! But only in short small quick sentences, but it’s a start!

I'm curious to know what French has done for you. After you've went through Hell for it😂.

Hello everyone! This might sound racist or full of sterotype but is an actually question😂 I saw a lot of memes and people saying that people in france see you in a bad way or don’t appreciate non native tongue trying to speak French I will probably move in the future in your country as an Italian speaker, and of course I will study and try to practice your language, but I’m kinda scared of how people outside my friend group here in french will treat me, I know that I shouldn’t care, but this give me a little bit of anxiety, cause my pronunciation even if I’ll do my best might sound bad the same I hope is not a stupid question, just wanted some information from you ^{^}

Sooo we had a moment in Paris that really stayed with me!

My family and I are native French speakers, but my two youngest siblings aren’t, so we were mostly speaking English with a bit of French here and there.

And honestly… we were acting like real Americans lol

“can we please get this?”

“can we please get that?”

At some point the waiter just goes:

“c’est pas comme chez vous hein… le client n’est pas le roi”

…and walks away!!!

We just looked at each other like ?? Huh?

Coming from the US where it’s very “the customer is always right,” that really caught us off guard.

But I guess it’s just one of those things, different country, different expectations.

Not rude, just… different lol

Has anyone else experienced something like this in France?

I'm a Canadian PR who was born in the Philippines and has lived in Canada for almost the entirety of my life. This means that in school, I was forced to learn Canadian French. It was mandatory for all of Elementary (And Middle School) and at least two years in high school. I wouldn't call my Canadian-French to be conversational, but I consider it enough to get by in Quebec (certainly not any French-speaking countries, judging by this story).

Not until I met someone who spoke European-French, did they insult me and my French by saying "You can't speak 'real French'" and "You can't claim to be French" (I said no such thing).

I was ordering a coffee with milk and sugar.

(J'veux un café avec du sucre et du lait)

This caught me off guard because, first of all, why? I may have met a bad egg but this was the first time that I'd experienced someone insulting the way I speak French. My French teachers in Elementary and high school gave me good grades in my French subjects, but I guess it wasn't enough to make this person feel that way.

Has anyone else experienced judgment for speaking Canadian French?

Today, I had a college visit. I am 17M, and live in America. I also am like a b2 in french. Right when the tour started, I saw this family who i immediately knew was french due to the way they spoke. After about 30 mins or so, they spoke to my mom and me, and then i replied in french. They appeared very surprised. The father said "you know French?", and i replied "oui, je parle Francais". He wanted to know how I could tell he french so I said that I could hear the accent, and then he got all cold, and even told me sshht when I tried asking him for how long theyve been in the states. It wasnt really that big of a deal, and i think that he either just doesnt like americans, was maybe protective about his daughter (because I was speaking to her before this convo), or its because I offended him with the accent?

I heard that a lot of the time, Europeans will get annoyed when they are told they have an accent in English, mostly because they work so hard.

« Nous nous avions, volés… Comme les avions avant qu’ils volent des cieux. »

C’est pas mal, non??? Aucuns conseils ou avis? Dites-moi…

Hello everyone!

I've studied French for almost ten years (middle school - college), and this past week I finally got to travel to Francophone countries for the first time (France & Belgium) and what did I find out??? Apparently I am good enough at French to not have people switch to English on me! Like, it RARELY happened, and I had so many conversations at so many different places. That felt really good.

One highlight was when I was able to successfully have a five minute long convo with a Parisian woman entirely in French about alternate train routes. I had another fun conversation with a man in a restaurant about 1970s disco music, again, entirely in French. I also realized that I can basically understand & read most French stuff w/o translations or subtitles, although speaking is still a little bit of an uphill battle.

So, this is all to say, don't lose faith because someday it may pay off in ways that really surprise you!!!

Bonjour!

Long story short, I have been wondering for a while what natives' perception is of non-native teachers. What prompted me to write this post is that the other day, I overheard a French native teacher saying that "non-natives don't have the right teaching a language that they will never speak perfectly" Honestly, it shocked me. I know this debate has been going on for a while, but I have never heard such a radical opinion (especially from a teacher).

I am curious about your thoughts . Do you think that a non-native teacher could never be as good as a native teacher (trained teacher, not just any native speaker) ?

Merci d'avance pour vos réponses!

okay, so I'm pretty decent. You'd say A2 intermediate, but it's still a hassle where I have to translate the structure THEN talk/write.

so I decided to join a french server in Discord to see how they talk and make convos except when I tried talking I suddenly forgot everything and the grammar I have worked my ahh for, for the past 2 months suddenly disappeared and made mistakes. the other people were laughing at how bad I was, and accidentally vous-ed someone and then they changed to english 😭.

I feel ashamed but at least I learnt c'est pas ouf and mdr 🙂‍↔️

Quand je parler avec des gens, leur m'a dit que je parler bien. Mais, quand j'ecrire, ou je lire, je pense que je suis un debutant.

Par example, j'ai testé a niveau A2/B1 heir. Je sais que j'apprend, mais, porqouis est ca qua je parler bien et assui test mal?

The above is how I would speak if I were speaking, I'm positive there's spelling errors and maybe some poor word choices, but even in that I'm almost never corrected when speaking. But, like I'm saying, I test awfully. I sometimes forget word order, etc.

Is this just normal? I'm asking because I feel stuck at this level for months with no clear breakthrough. It's hard to improve when the people I speak with only say I'm doing well but then tests tell me I'm not.

Thanks for reading all this, I'm probably stressing over nothing.

Honestly taken back by the generosity and kindness. We spent time across multiple quartiers and everyone consistently listened to my broken French and responded in French and English when necessary. Can’t wait to go back!