France: ohhhh un Québécois! Tabernacle!
I never understood the “ugh you’re trying to speak my language, I don’t feel like listening to you butcher it” that some countries get.
Like every time a coworker bitches about how they can’t understand a warehouse worker because of their heavy accent, the fuck do you expect them to do, not try to talk at all? (the real answer is usually “hurrrr go back tuh where dey came frum”) but you’re gonna sit there, butchering the language you use every single day by the way you speak and how you spell, while they’re in a country they likely did not grow up in, and are learning the language still. If they don’t converse, they have a harder time improving. If you truly cared about understanding them, you would talk to them more.
Anecdote time: one of the forklift drivers was fairly new when I started last year. She’s a social butterfly. Comes over to ask how we’re all doing, asks how my wife is, how coworkers kids are, how our weeks are going. She moved here from Puerto Rico, and barely has an accent anymore. It’s definitely there and you can place it, but 0 problem understanding every word.
A couple guys started just after I did, and they stand around the compactor all day where it’s too noisy to talk, and nobody voluntarily goes near. They still have very broken speech and heavy accents. They’ve been going out to clean things recently so I try to strike up conversations but they don’t seem too social when they’re working.
I have no way of knowing what these people do outside of work, but if inside is any indicator, being social and talking goes a long way to improving speech in any given language.
So maybe don’t go “that’s cute. Stop trying.” instead go “hey cool, but if you’re up for some constructive criticism…” and be helpful. Or shut the fuck up.
“Expat” is just British term used in Britain about British “people” living abroad, innit?
Yeah I lived in Germany and speaking German was not encouraged. In France, they pretended they didn’t speak English and ignored you if you spoke in broken French.
Just recently, I was in France and all the reactions were just lovely. Everyone replied in French to my French but asked if we should continue in English, when they noticed my understanding was incomplete.
Some cashiers spoke really fast, so I just pretended I understood and nodded. But everyone was very accommodating and repeated sentences if I asked or explained with different words.
Most people even spoke English with my colleagues, who don’t speak French, and French with me. Even one waitress, whose English was really at the beginner level, made it work.
Any attempt by a foreigner to speak “cúpla focail” (a few words) of Irish to me has been incredibly well received. It’s usually Americans actually and their pronunciation is terrible, because Irish sounds nothing like it’s spelled when compared to the usual latin alphabet sounds, but fair fucks to them. I appreciate it very much.
Sprich Deutsch, Du Hurensohn!