I have to admit — and no offence meant to Anne or any other French people here — my parents and I noticed this when we visited Paris a couple of years ago. Certainly not everyone there was like that (and we did get by in French as much as we could), but I just remember in particular, there was a very expensive restaurant we went to one evening for a treat. We asked the waiter "Parlez-vous Anglais?" and got a blunt "Non." Then by the time we'd finished and he could see just how much money we'd spent there, he started talking to us in English...Anne Henriette wrote:I have always thought that French people are very... intolerant when it comes to languages. Most of them are not ready to learn another language. And they do not really tolerate that foreigners speak to them in another language than French! It is nombrilistic (does this word even exist in English?!) and quite arrogant I think...
That said, a lot of English people — and Australians too, if they don't have a second language in their family — are just as reluctant to try speaking another language if the other person can possibly be persuaded to speak English!