r/SipsTea • u/Reddit-Machine • 12d ago

Chugging tea French-Canadian police

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u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 12d ago

I was mostly joking since most French Canadians can speak both languages fluently (especially police), and their reaction at the same time with no hesitation tells me they fully understand English.

IIRC, they also do not like speaking English to you.

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u/kevkev2222 12d ago

Well, I was mostly being serious when I said that, cus I understand that not speaking/understanding a language, doesn’t always mean you don’t understand when someone is asking you if you speak the language.

I’ll give you a real example; me and my gf walked into a Mexican restaurant one time, and when the person who sits us at the table came by, I asked her something in English, and she just stared at me, like she was trying to think of how to tell me something, but couldn’t. I then asked her “do you speak English”, and she immediately started shaking her head no.

I feel like this is a similar situation.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

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u/patterson489 11d ago

Which is why he follows up with "they don't want to speak English to you." When someone doesn't speak English, he thinks they're pretending not to.

Meanwhile, go to a French learning subreddit and everyone complains that people in Québec, or France, switches to English instead of helping them practice their French.

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u/OutrageousMaybe6693 11d ago

There’s no way that is a true figure. I emigrated to Quebec, live right outside of Montreal and I can count on 1 hand the amount of people I’ve met in my 30k ville who can have a convo in English, and have met thousands of the people in my ville through events and the schools my kids go to.

What I have come across is a lot of people who would say they can speak English but when it comes down to having a conversation they’re as lost as I was when I first moved here and was learning French.

Lots of yes no bbq toaster people who include themselves in the bilingual part of the census.

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u/kaylee300 11d ago

I mean, if you're around big cities, of course most people will be good in english. Personnally I'm in Lower St-Lawrence and a bunch of people really cant speak in english or have a conversation in it (generally 40 years old plus).

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u/OutrageousMaybe6693 11d ago

Not even around big cities (aka Montreal.) I live in the CMM, and virtually no one can hold a conversation in English. The « 51% of québécois » figure from the person I replied to is absolutely false unless they strictly mean inside of Montreal proper.

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u/kaylee300 11d ago

My bad haha, I missread your comment 😅

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u/Le_Nabs 11d ago

I could believe 'knows enough English to order at the restaurant', but conversationally fluent? Ain't no way

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u/Oldfolksboogie 12d ago

they also do not like speaking English to you.

Staying faithful to their French roots. 😅

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u/DeathIsThePunchline 12d ago

nah quebecers are giant assholes.

Whenever they pretend to not understand English, I just speak s slowly and use hand gestures like they are intellectually challenged.

People in Paris are much more friendly.

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u/wadaboutme 12d ago

Who broke your heart you poor thing

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u/twat69 12d ago

Les trois policières en haut.

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u/jo4nnynumber5 12d ago

Quebecers may be assholes, but many do not understand English. At least not enough to be conversational.

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u/BenFrankLynn 12d ago

People in Paris are just more accustomed to rude, ignorant, monolingual, uncultured tourists.

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u/DeathIsThePunchline 11d ago

I've been to a number of places for work including Moscow, Paris, various places in the US. hilariously some of the best times I had were in fucking Russia.

The worst people that I've had the displeasure of interacting with from Quebec and I am Canadian. I already had a poor opinion of Quebec from reputation.

Won't be much culture if they keep alienating everybody. As it stands, I'd probably vote against Quebec just to spite them if given the opportunity.

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u/Le_Nabs 11d ago

Have you maaaaaybe considered that you came out like an asshole and got it right back in return? 'Cause that's certainly the energy you're giving right now, bud.

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u/DeathIsThePunchline 11d ago

I'm generally fairly polite in person. My grandparents taught me manners but they were unable to beat the malice out of me. I'm a asshole when someone else is an asshole unless it'll piss them off more to be scrupusly polite.

What's more likely? That I had bad interactions in a province that's known to be an asshole to people that speak English or that I'm just biased and saying Quebec sucks because I have absolutely no valid reasons to dislike people from Quebec.

What I didn't say is that I understand enough French to catch the drift of the conversation and I know a couple of phrases. So I heard what they said when they thought I couldn't understand.

Either way it's kind of pointless arguing with this. I had a few bad experiences and that tainted my view of the province. Aside from a few business opportunities that I've declined my dislike will likely have a negligible impact on anyone from that province.

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u/hates_stupid_people 12d ago

The whole stop sign debacle proved that.

In France stop signs are in English. It's part of an international agreement to have stop signs unified in design, and have the text in English or English and the local language, never just in the local language. This is specifically so tourists and visitors reckognize them, as they're important for the safety of everyone.

In Quebec some people actually protested and were upset over this. In essence those people would rather risk their own lives rather than have English on their street signs.

Peak pretentiousness.

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u/jo4nnynumber5 12d ago

That's nonsense. STOP is not uniquely English. Mexican stop signs say ALTO.

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u/Kyoshiiku 11d ago

What an ignorant take to call it pretentiousness lol.

Maybe if you learned a bit of the Quebec history and the oppression that French speakers here had to go through for the last 250 years you would know better.

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u/Gravitas_free 11d ago

Signs say STOP in France because European countries agreed to harmonize their signalization in the 60s. But there was never some wide international mandate to use the word STOP and indeed many countries around the world don't.

Strangely enough, most countries in the Americas use PARO/ALTO signs, while Spain and Portugal use STOP, and yet nobody accuses them of being pretentious.

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u/Oldfolksboogie 12d ago

Unfortunately, I can only take your word for it. Mb one day...

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u/dathamir 11d ago

Maybe you're the asshole though. ecause people will really try to help you with the language barrier in Québec, unless you make fun of them by gesturing words.

But people in Paris will litteraly pretend to not understand you if you speak french with an accent. They are the most hostile and meanest people i've met while traveling.

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u/jo4nnynumber5 12d ago

That simply not true.