Travelrific® Travel Journal

Parlez-vous francais?

May 29, 2007 9:59 am

By Linda Tancs

Some time ago, there was a lot of ballyhoo about the French ministry banning all English words and colloquialisms from the French vocabulary. Maybe “hamburger” was the last straw. So how do the French react these days to the francophone-challenged tourist? Perhaps not as well as we would like, according to a recent study suggesting that France is perceived negatively on its ability to be welcoming to visitors. Whether this perception is based strictly on unpleasant dealings due to language barriers, however, appears hard to gauge. Anyway, I’ll have some (french) fries with that hamburger.