How do French-speakers cope with Anglophone “snobbery” when visiting an Anglophone country?
Offhand I can’t think of personal experience with anti-English discrimination either in Montreal or outside of it, but I haven’t been there in more than a decade, and haven’t lived there since dinosaurs roamed the earth. And when I did live there, I spoke French passably well. However, there’s no denying that such discrimination exists, even in Montreal:
Montreal’s transit authority maintains that under the present language law, its ticket takers must operate in French, which lately has spurred complaints from passengers. Last year, the city of Montreal erected 60 English safety signs nearby Anglophone schools in an effort to slow passing vehicles. The Quebec Board of the French Language and its squad of inspectors ordered that they be taken down; a snowy drive through town revealed that all had been replaced by French notices.
A friend told me that, one day, the cafe in his work, whose employees had always cheerfully spoken to him in English before, had suddenly changed all signs to French-only, and not a word of English was heard. “If I give them my order in English, they still respond in French,” he said.
… Until you have lived there, the depth of Québec’s language issues isn’t apparent … There was a news story recently about a pregnant woman who was in a mild car accident and called 911 for assistance; instead of having individual dispatchers based on location (she was in Montreal), she was routed through a central point to a rural dispatcher who spoke only French. Despite the simplicity of her speech (“Help me. I am pregnant. I have been hit by a car.”), the operator refused to help her, and his supervisor backed him up, stating that “911 operators are not obligated to know English.”
… There’s the rub: it doesn’t actually matter how well you speak French. As long as you’re an anglophone, what matters is that you were born English-speaking. You could be perfectly fluent, perfectly bilingual, and it wouldn’t matter because at heart, you would still be an Anglo. Another friend said, “It’s really as close as able-bodied white people can get to knowing systemic discrimination. We’re lucky enough that we can just leave and go to another province to get away from it.”
I suppose when they encounter it, they cope with it the same way that English speakers cope with anti-English sentiment. The salient question is which form of discrimination is more prevalent. English speakers are not under the misapprehension that their language is under attack, and indeed English has cheerfully embraced the adoption of no end of foreign words, idioms, and expressions, which is part of what makes it such a richly expressive language. Whereas French seems to be not just under the influence of an intensely defensive paranoia, but also a rigid sense of purity, as if the introduction of a foreign term (especially English!), or too much English being spoken or exhibited in signage, will lead to some unspecified moral corruption or degradation of culture.
I’ve gotten along famously in the French speaking Caribbean by making an attempt. I’ve learned a few words and am self deprecating about my monolingual situation. I’ve found that once I show I’m willing to try, people do the same.
I confess I’m a little timid when it comes trying new languages, I don’t pick them up easily and stumble far more over the spoken than the written.
Still, having said that, I will always give it a go on the basis that it shows good manners to try, and it I rely on the good manners of the recipient to either help me out with patience, advice, gentle correction or even switching to a language that suits us both. I’m struggling to think of an occasion when this hasn’t panned out in a polite and genial way.
Certainly when I’m on the receiving end and someone tries to speak english, however bad it is I cannot conceive of me being snobby about it.
I assume my faltering German sounds like a German speaker saying to me" Can you be for telling me to the supermarket?" However clunky and grammatically incorrect it is clear what is meant and I’d tailor my response to try and make sure that we are on the same page, Like a bad artist playing “pictionary” I’m sure we’ll get there.
I certainly don’t think “what a dick, if he can’t be arsed to learn the language then I can’t be arsed to help him”
If your French pronunciation is like your spelling and jography… if it’s the one on the bay it’s St Jean de Luz and if it’s the one at the foot of the vertical slope it’s St Jean Pied-de-Port. Port-au-Prince is across the Atlantic, not in the French Basque country.
The mascara and bad Keith Richards accent probably don’t hurt, either.
Is there a good Keith Richards accent?
Supermarket? It be for going directly this street down and then left tuning upon encountering places where crows fly. Good luck! 
Yeah, I’m Catholic and having my friends sitting around in Montreal discussing the various profanities based on things I hold sacred was…not fun.
I go all “angryphone” on 'em. Learn to bastardize the Queen’s speech like the rest of us!
Due to geographical reasons, my experience is a little different. But it can get similar sometimes.
I can speak both English and French. I need to improve my French though.
I live in the USA. I speak English. If you don’t speak English, fine.
But do not tell me that I should have to speak YOUR language when you don’t speak mine, which is the language of the country we live in, but you don’t think you should have to speak it, but everyone should have to speak YOUR language.
That is hypocrosy write large.
Did you even read the OP, Annie?
What’s French for “cheese eating surrender monkeys?”
Fromage manger des singes de reddition¿
I was in Tokyo demonstrating our software to a group, many of whom didn’t speak English. I let some translate for the others, and when I felt good enough to interject a little bit of my Japanese into the conversation, it really lit up their faces and broke the ice!
NB: a reference to Allo! Allo, a British comedy about a French Cafe under the Nazis, where a British officer, posing as a French Policeman, who thinks he knows French, might be heard to say, “I was pissing by the door, when I heard two shats. You are holding in your hand a smoking goon; you are clearly the guilty potty.”
Bold mine That explains all the swimming required on El Camino :smack:
But it was St Jean Pied-de-Port which was the start of my Camino.
Remember that (play on words intentional) French is no longer the lingua franca worldwide, English is. The French haven’t gotten used to this yet. :rolleyes:
“The English language, by and large, is the results of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to get dates with Saxon barmaids, and has no more claim to legitimacy that any of the other results of those liaisons.” H. Beam Piper
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” - James D. Nicoll
That is a literal translation of what you said, but takes on a different meaning due to word order.
Des singes de reddition qui manger le fromage says closer to what you meant.
The monkeys are eating the cheese, not vice versa. 
Or I may be wrong - it’s been a while since my French got any serious exercise. :dubious: