American tourists in France

Great Debates
21

I spent a year as an exchange student at the Sorbonne (University of Paris) and had no unpleasant experiences with rude Parisians.

Of course, I was an impoverished student, rather than a tourist with a group, but I agree with matt_mcl and others that speaking French is an immense help.

OTOH, my roommate, whose grammar was better than mine, had an atrocious (apparently to the Parisians) accent. She was sometimes ignored by shopkeepers, who would pretend that they didn’t understand what she was saying.

Whatever you do, though, don’t go to France in a large tour group–these herds (at least all the ones I saw) were all that even sven says they are, and worse.

22

I was in Paris once, with my family and we were a bit lost. I overheard a man in the underground speaking English to another gentleman. So I walked over, waited for a lull in the conversation and asked very politely if either could tell me how to get back to my hotel. One of them told me, in French, that he could not speak English. Then both of them turned away from me and resumed their conversation… in English.

Another time, in Paris, we wanted to get a picture of our kids in front of this garden. There were several people with that same idea and we were all waiting patiently, taking our turn. When our kids walked up to get into position, this Parisian woman barged up, dragging her kids. She literally pushed our kids out of the way. When we started to protest, she started yelling at us in French. A Frenchman standing next to us was translating. Apparently this woman felt that American tourists were second class citizens and had no right to be there (in Paris).

Yet another time, in the underground, a man was running to catch a train. In his haste he ran over my daughter from behind, tripping and both crashing to the ground. My daughter, being only 7, began to cry. The man was furious and started to yell at her and he raised his arm as if he was about to strike her. I got there just in time and chased the guy off.

We had a waiter at a sidewalk cafe refuse to serve us because we were Americans and “all Americans are too rude and too much trouble”. He literally told us to “go away”! Of course, we proved him right later when we had to send our drink orders back several times. We ordered Coke, he brought water. “Sorry, we ordered Coke.” He brought sparkling water. “Sorry, we ordered Coke.” He brought ginger ale. “Thanks, the ginger ale is fine…” The table next to us had Coke - don’t know how many times they had to ask…

In a grocery store in Paris, I was looking at a product on the shelf and reading a label when from out of no where I was rammed by a shopping cart. An old woman said “pardon”, but she said it in a barking sort of tone and the look on her face was not pleasant. I returned to my label and she rammed me again harder. “Pardon!” I looked behind me to indicate that there was plenty of room to pass behind. Again she rammed. Again, “pardon!!!”, with more authority. I stepped back to allow her to pass. Instead, she pushed her cart up in front of me and stopped and began reading the label on the same product that I had been looking at. She lingered a while and went on. A few minutes later I heard the crash of a shopping cart in the next aisle and the familiar bark… “Pardon!!!”

I’ve got a hundred more stories like these… More from Paris than any other city I’ve ever visited (yes, including New York).

One Parisian suggested that I would be treated more like an equal if I learned to speak French. Interestingly, I’ve gotten similar advice from Japanese, Chinese, Germans, Italians, Spanish, and just about everywhere I’ve ever visited. I wish I had time to learn all of the worlds languages, however I think it’s a bit of a double standard to REQUIRE me to speak every local language in order to be treated with dignity and respect. I am, personally, very polite (almost to a fault) and I treat everyone I meet with mutual respect… at least until they ram me with a shopping cart…

23

I think there are two different (but related) things here. One is rudeness from people in general and another rudeness from those who are supposed to work for you (waiters, clerks, etc)

I find service in europe is much worse than in the US and I attribute this to the lack of flexibility in hiring and firing people.

Some national airlines are legendary for their rudeness (Iberia and Air france come to mind). To someone who cannot be fired a customer is just a pain in the backside.

Oh this reminds me of the incident a few years ago on an Air France transatlantic flight where a man was dragged out of the toilet and into the aisle with his pants down by the cabin crew. The smoke alarm had gone off and they broke in thinking they would catch the guy smoking… it turned out they got the wrong toilet and the guy smoking was in the other toilet. The man was humiliated and sued (in American courts, of course). You would think the airline would apologize … yeah, right! think again! Air France was defending their crew.

Anyway, America is more the exception when it comes to friendly service. Europe still has a way to go and if you want really unfriendly service and general rudeness just go to China.

24

I used to live in Paris and didn’t find people there to be any ruder than people in any other big city. I was many, many times mortified by the rude, crude, obnoxious actions of Americans, however. Sometimes it was embarrassing to admit that I was from the same country.

In defense of the shopkeepers who are supposedly pretending that they can’t understand you, can I just say that French is a very precise language - much more so than English - and words that are pronounced incorrectly are perceived as gibberish. It’s not the same as if someone were speaking English with a Midwestern accent and talking to someone with a Southern accent; each person, while obviously noticing the difference in accents, would be able to understand the other easily. This is not so in French. (Yes, people from southern France can understand people from northern France. I’m talking about people saying French words with sounds that don’t exist in the French language, which is what most English-speaking people do. French uses very exact phonetics and if you don’t pronounce things right, it can be very hard to understand what you are saying.)

Also, it must be tiring to be completely and overwhelmingly inundated with hundreds of thousands of tourists every single day of the year. It never ends: every day there are thousands of people who want directions; who want to know where the ketchup is for their chateaubriand; who don’t see why they should have to pay more to sit at the outside tables; who don’t understand why they aren’t allowed to go into Notre Dame with their hats and tube tops and Daisy Duke shorts; and who think that no matter what Paris has, it’s not as good as the American version, and why shouldn’t they be free to announce that loudly to everyone?

25

That’s a huge cop out! There are many American cities that receive hundreds of thousands of world wide tourists every day, and very rarely are these tourists made to feel inferior because they lack mastery of the English language. I visited Disneyland Paris and constantly had my dignity trampled. I visited Disneyland in Japan and was treated like royalty!

26

I love Paris. I’ve rarely run into problems there, and the first time I went there, I was quite shocked not to run into the rudeness I’ve always heard about. Of course, I also followed what I consider simple courtesy in which I would attempt to at least say a few basic phrases in the native language of the country I’m visiting. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in france, spain, vietnam, hungary or brazil, it really breaks the ice and warms people up to you. It’s only occassionally failed, and yes, it’s happened in paris, but I would count that as an exception.

To me this seems a basic rule of courtesy, along the lines of when you’re in someone else’s home, respect it. It isn’t that difficult.

And yes, service in Europe is generally abysmal. I’ve been living in Budapest for the last 2 years, and, well, I’ve actually gotten used to it – it’s a different style of living, much slower-paced, longer lunch-times, etc. I’m speaking in general, of course. But nobody really seems to mind, so I assume it’s a matter of what you’re used to.

And, it’s a funny thing, even though tourists bring in the money, they are quite easy to find annoying. I generally hate running into groups of American tourists here, and I’m an American, so I can only imagine wait staff feel.

27

Um, considering that Disneyland Paris is one great big American attack on the dignity of Western Europe, I’d say it’s a case of giving as good as they are getting.

28

How so? I thought the American influences at Disneyland Paris were exceptionally subdued. Given that the fundamental point of Disneyland is to celebrate other cultures, I think you’re off the mark.
BTW, the concept of the amusement park originated in Europe.

29

What matt_mcl said.

As for the inundation of tourists: I know that many other cities also get thousands of tourists, but I was struck by how never-ending it is in Paris. I’ve never seen anything else like it, and I currently live in one of the highest tourist-attraction cities in the U.S. There is really never a break - it’s tourists 24/7/365.

I did sometimes find customer-service employees to be impolite, but again, no worse overall than New York or Chicago or Boston. I think part of what Americans perceive as rudeness is simply a difference perception of what is culturally acceptable behavior.

Not to say that there are NO rude people in Paris - of course there are plenty of mean nasty people. Just not, in my experience of living there and traveling throughout the country, more there than anywhere else.

30

I spent five days in Paris in the fall of 1998. I was lucky to be able to stay with family friends, who are, shockingly, French. Their daughter is my age and is a university English student. I hung out with her and her friend - both of them speak excellent English, so the fact that I speak NO French at all was not a big problem; I had my own personal translators. Having studied Spanish for five years, I found that I could read French pretty well. Aside from a few people who were just incredibly amazed that I had never bothered to study French, I encountered none of the vaunted French rudeness.

However, I must add that I had been living in Israel for two months at this point, and was probably inured to what Americans consider rudeness by this time. When it comes to pushing, shoving, and amazing bluntness (aka tactlessness), Israelis absolutely take the cake.

31

You want to know why? It’s taking one of the most beautiful, cultured, historical cities to be found anywhere and plonking a giant plastic amusement park beside it, whose basic philosophy is wouldn’t it be nice if every child around the world amused him or herself with the products of the Disney Corporation. I mean, Disney basically waltzed into France and started marketing Paris as a quaint sideline to Eurodisney. It’s difficult for North Americans to get a handle on this because almost none of our cities is older than about 400 years, but I’d be offended too under the circumstances.

32

France is simply a different culture; as has been stated several times, culture shock tends to make things that are common to the French seem rude to those of us who are outsiders in the culture. I’m going to Paris and Cannes for the first time this summer, and we are required to read a great little tome called Cultural Misunderstandings, in which stuff like this is explained. The French just have more general courtesy and formality in their everyday lives than do the typical Americans. For example, when entering a shop, one is expected to greet the shopkeeper and any customers that might be in the shop as well. If you don’t, you’re seen as a snob. Also, the French have a higher tolerance for fighting their way through everyday life; living in a socialist country, fighting bureaucracy is a way of life - in fact, there’s a thing called the Système-D, which describes how the French circumvent some difficulties by persuading officials to bend rules and such. It’s not that they’re rude, in short; we just don’t “get” their culture because it is different in very subtle ways.

[/QUOTE]
however I think it’s a bit of a double standard to REQUIRE me to speak every local language in order to be treated with dignity and respect.
[/QUOTE]

Joey, I apologize, but I have to respond to this. When a European comes over to the States, do you expect him/her to speak English perfectly? Probably not. The same thing applies to people travelling in Europe - the Europeans don’t expect you to spout off perfect complex sentences in 5 languages (always properly using the subjunctive, of course), they just want to see an effort made to use their language. When you go to a different country, it is always appreciated if you just attempt to spit out a few phrases - stuff like “Hello,” “thank you,” “please,” “where is…(and a few key words like bathroom, restaurant)” etc. It’s foolhardy, IMHO, to go over to another country and expect courtesy when you refuse to even try a few words in their native language.

That having been said, can anyone recommend good phrasebooks for Italian, Portuguese, and/or German?

33

I do have to corroborate the statement about French having precise pronunciation. There’s three words, for example, which are pronounced /ku/, /kü/, and /keu/… very difficult for an anglophone to pronounce correctly the first time. Which is difficult, since they mean “neck”, “ass”, and “cock”, respectively.

34

missbunny

Yes, I meant to make this point myself. I agree 100%, this is part of it. The other part is, I think Parisians (for some reason) seem to be less tolerant of other cultures. Maybe it’s because they feel intruded upon.
mat_mcl writes:

Sorry but Disney was invited. Paris saw a chance to increase tourism, jobs, and generally boost the local economy. Paris was only one of several sites that were competing for EuroDisney. As for the cultural impact, why do you think they stuck it out in the boonies, away from all of the culturally significant landmarks?

I only talked to a couple of Parisians about it, but they were actually pretty pleased that Disney was nearby. They only had good things to say about it.
Quadzilla asks:

Perhaps I misrepresented myself. Certainly when I visit another culture, I try to learn as many polite phrases and necessary elements of the language. In fact, in the case of French, I was more prepared than most countries, because I had taken two years of French in school. However I was far from being conversational. I must admit that I was a bit intimidated, though because on one of my first visits to Paris, a business associate suggested that I NOT try to speak French because many French are offended by the way Americans butcher their language (his words - not mine).

Generally, I have a lot of tolerance for people of all cultures and sub cultures. My only real point is that when I first went to Paris, I expected the rude French stereotype to be quickly dispelled. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen for me. On my couple of dozen visits, I found a surplus of Parisians who were eager to keep the myth alive. Though, there were certainly a lot of very nice Parisians, as well!!!

35

Well, it looks like JoeyBlades is the only one here who’s had a stereotyped experience of rude Parisians…not to trample the Debate, but I would just recommend, Joe, that you stay out of Paris. There’s lots of other nice places to go.

I felt a pang of empathy when the “hordes of tourists” thing was mentioned. For most of the 20th century, France was an incredibly cheap place to take a vacation, especially for Americans…James Thurber wrote in 1937 about dining on excellent four-course meals, with fine wine, for about fifty cents a head. Parisians have been drowning in tourists for over a hundred years, and they’re probably good and sick of them.

About 15 or 20 years ago the “woim toined,” as we say in Brooklyn. New York City has been a nice cheap place for Europeans to come visit. And now that crime is down, we’re seeing a lot more tourists from Sheboygan and Modesto and Assboink, Idaho, as well.

And you know what? WE HATE THEM. We try to make our way down crowded Midtown sidewalks on our way to our offices, or to lunch, or to the Subway, and we’re impeded by gawkers and bosthoons, their pockets filled with turnips, staring up at the tall buildings. SaxFace has mentioned elsewhere the pleasure she takes in giving incorrect directions (“Empire State Building? Tout droite…125thet Lexington.”).

So I can feel for the Parisians. Although I personally have never had a bad experience over there.