Didn't order coffee
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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Maybe the accent gave it away even if the French is perfect. I'm not a fluent French speaker but I learned it in school. And even among various French speakers I hear, I can tell the difference in accent.
It must be a paris thing, I went to Lyon and obviously hit up a bakery near my friend's place. I did pointing & grunting and extremely basic french.
I did not enjoy the random fish danish I ended up eating since I fucking hate fish.
Merci beaucoup.
A guy I know complained they kept talking English to him, although he was native. I told him to ditch the raincoat and shave the stubble. I mean, the guy dressed like a stereotype.
Maybe the smile
Is not showing a will to live part of becoming fluent in French?
It's more a question about using or abusing a smile:
https://www.ohlalafrenchcourse.com/en/blog/article/why-aren-t-the-french-nice
I know that in some (many) cultures, the American "smile" can be unnerving
I've heard it described similarly. In much of the US, it's pretty normal to smile or nod at someone you're passing as an acknowledgement. But in cultures that aren't accustomed to that, I've heard it feels like if someone walked up to your car at a red light and knocked on your window just to say hi.
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Isn't it the same with any language?
In English, if you get the word order wrong, or you say "how", when it should be "what", or you speak a bit too clearly, like, you say "Good morning", instead of "g'morning".
I expect there are plenty of nuances in every language that can tip off a native speaker, that they don't think about until it happens.
And, does the French person respond with perfect English, or do they have a bit of an accent?
The French are very cool people, who know how to throw a revolution, and that is what matters at the moment. Respect.
Ehhhhh...
Given how dominant English has been on the world stage for decades, there's been a few times in my life where I'm listening to someone speak English and I didn't realize that they weren't American/AngloCanadian. (Dear Canadians, I am sorry, but like, dude our accents right on each others borders are near indistinguishable)
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The only one who can actually say you have a perfect accent is a native speaker.
This seems like self-diagnosed.
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One thing I learned while living in Japan and teaching English is that people who speak foreign languages might hear things differently from you.
The most striking example was that my students often couldn't even hear the difference between "she" and "sea" unless I was pointing it out in isolation. The difference is obvious to English speakers, but subtle to Japanese speakers.
And yes, there are examples the other way, but they're harder to explain here. Often, it's the difference between vowel sounds. Japanese are more strict, but an English speaker might not distinguish between an 'i' and an 'e' sound at speed. And have a bigger tendency to slur their pronunciation in this case.
But anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if there were similar things in French and English.
So how can you know if you're speaking perfectly unless you check with a native? Only when you're nearing fluency can you start to understand.
Japanese is a syllable-timed language whereas English is a stress-timed language. That makes a big difference when it comes to the clarity of vowel sounds. In English in unimportant syllables, the vowel sounds get relaxed and tend towards being prounounced as a Schwa. In Japanese, syllables are expected to take more or less the same time each, and as a result there's no relaxation of the pronunciation of the vowel sounds.
So, for example, when an American says "Toyota" they'll tend to say "tuh-YO-duh" because the natural emphasis in English is on the second syllable, which means the unstressed syllables get relaxed and become more like the schwa sound. Also, the "t" sound shifts to a "d" sound because it's easier not to cut off the vocalization to hit that final "t", and since it's unstressed it doesn't matter so much. In Japanese it's "TO-Yo-Ta'" The first syllable is slightly stressed and every vowel sound is clear, and the final "t" is important. In fact, the name used to be "Toyoda" named after the founding family's name, and they intentionally switched that to a "t" sound instead.
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The clothes, what else 🤣
You can keep speaking French after this point. Practice makes perfect
When I was in Paris a few years ago, it was such an inversion of the rest of my experience in Europe. Anywhere else, english was the language where me and anyone would be best able to communicate. Many times in Paris, my wretched French was the most effective way to communicate and I am genuinely sorry to everyone involved in that.
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