Not sure how it’s these days, but I’ve been in rural France for a week 20 years ago as a teen and if it wasn’t for one lady speaking English I’d almost starve there. My english wasn’t particularly great, but my french was really bad and I knew it. Every single French I met there refused to acknowledge that and kept on spitting french pretty damn fast and kept it going faster every time I missed the point. Terrible, terrible experience.
Not sure how it’s these days, but I’ve been in rural France for a week 20 years ago as a teen and if it wasn’t for one lady speaking English I’d almost starve there. My english wasn’t particularly great, but my french was really bad and I knew it. Every single French I met there refused to acknowledge that and kept on spitting french pretty damn fast and kept it going faster every time I missed the point. Terrible, terrible experience.
How did you end up there?
School exchange trip. One week in French family, one week French kid in our family.
“My” exchange student couldn’t make two words in english, literally. In high school. How was that possible IDK. His younger brother was the same.
Probably because they lived in rural France with unskilled English teachers
It was rural, but still like 30 km to Strasbourgh, so it was not end of the world…
Alsace is known to be quite rural, 30km from Strasbourg could be far remote already.
Did they speak Alsacian by any chance? I know older people had it as a first language a few generations ago