> When you go to France, don't you dare to speak to someone in English, they are gonna freak out
Please stop spreading bullshit. French don’t "freak out" for being spoken to in English. A lot of people in the older generation don’t have a good command of the language, that’s it. The situation is not very different from a lot of other countries.
ok, I expressed myself wrong. But the fact that tourism leads to tourist tend to speak in English first is outrageous for many locals, old and young, and not just in France.
This happened to me in Germany also, so I started approaching people by saluting them in Spanish, which is my main language, and they had a different reaction (a very positive one) than those who I said hi to in English.
It's not bullshit. Many people have an anti-american feeling in a cultural sense. (not saying I'm endorsing it)
I believe it is pretty clever to defy them by using a French word that sounds a little inappropriate in English, if that were the case. Totally legal. But if its not, why should we, non-US Citizens, have to bare linguistic and cultural impositions because some feel 'uncomfortable' with the way we express in our own languages? Totally non-sense.